I was told on multiple occasions that when you go to college, you shouldn’t live with your best friends. It’s dangerous and you’re bound to end up without your friends at all.
That has proven to be true for those around me. There were two guys on my floor freshman year who were best friends, and by the end of the year they were barely speaking.
However, living with your friends later, namely sophomore, junior, and senior year, is fantastic. And no one talks about that. I live with my three best friends: Emily, who I met in middle school; Lindsey, who I met at orientation; and Cori, who was my random roommate freshman year. I love living with Emily, Lindsey, and Cori. I wouldn’t want to live any other way.
We constantly talk about how positive our home environment is. We know each other really well, we care about each other, and we genuinely like spending time as a group. Even though our schedules are crazy, because we live in the same apartment, we can always spend time together.
Last year, Cori and I lived together in a dorm while Lindsey and Emily lived across campus. We spent a ton of time together. We would stay up late in my dorm room, watching movies, eating Dominos, and always laughing. Now that we live together, we don’t ever have to leave, never have to worry about walking across campus in the snow, and never have to go back to our boring other roommates.
I’m not saying that you should reject the advice of those older and wiser than all of us who have experienced losing their friends because they lived with them. I am, however, saying that your friends can be closer than friends: they can be family. And that’s achievable through living in the same space.
Lizz Birkhoff