Carleton student: The ups and downs of different roommate situations

Carleton College senior Claire Weinberg blogs about the pros and cons of various living arrangements at the school, from living alone to sharing an apartment with half a dozen people.

When I was in school, our only official option was to share a room with another person. (My roommate moved out to join a fraternity my freshman year, so I got lucky.) Or we could rent an apartment somewhere in town.

So I find this "quad/quint" thing rather quaint.

Here's the first option. I have no idea what loneliness she's talking about:

Create a More Connected Minnesota

MPR News is your trusted resource for the news you need. With your support, MPR News brings accessible, courageous journalism and authentic conversation to everyone - free of paywalls and barriers. Your gift makes a difference.

Single. There are single rooms in all the dorms that you can live in starting sophomore year. They're some of the easiest rooms to get in room draw.

  • Pro: PRIVACY. This cannot be overstated as a reason to live in a single. There are very few truly private places on campus, perhaps because of institutional fear of inappropriate behavior in public spaces, I don't really know. But if you have a significant other or like to have your space in the mornings and evenings, a single is a great advantage.

  • Con: LONELINESS. You don't have built-in social interaction if you live in a single, so you can go days without talking to anyone if you don't make an effort. My friend who had a single last year said that for the entirety of fall term, when all the juniors were abroad, no one had been in his single but him. This is a depressing thing. But if you're a solitary person, you might not mind it too much.

Read the rest here.