The date is Tuesday, August 22. 23:00 o’clock. T-minus eight days until your first day at Taft. The battle has begun— you are a soldier and your life solely depends upon the decision of your Command Sergeant Major: Ms. Salatas. Her trusted strategy: The Housing Lottery. Your first year roommate…an enemy or an ally? Soon, the telegram arrives, and your fate awaits in the inbox of your new Gmail account. In Times New Roman and 12-pt font, the subject line reads: Dorm Assignments for the 2025-2026 School Year.
We know exactly how you feel. The trauma that comes from years of sharing a room with your little brother is real. You will never unhear the reverberating snores of that girl in the bunk below you. Those sleepless nights were the moments you knew that you’d never, ever return to Cabin Eleven at Camp Kikiwaka. You will ask your mom just about a million questions during those few, uncertain days before moving in—what will they be like? What if they don’t like our room at exactly a crisp 67 degrees? What if they stay up into the wee hours of the morning playing FIFA obnoxiously on our Xbox One with their little cousin? What if they even bring the scaly, pet snake whose account I wandered upon while stalking their Instagram tags?! Your mom will assure you, “Honey, your roommate will be wonderful and I’m sure Mac Basement will feel just like home!”
Introducing The Roommate Peace Pact: the thoroughly researched formula for getting along with your roommate. We are Ashton and Mary Kidd, expert roommates, living in a quad together this year, who understand each other’s habits inside and out. For example, Ashton knows to give MK her space after a 0-9 loss on the Girls Junior Varsity Soccer Team. There are only so many saves she can make with her cute goalie gloves and fantastic diving skills. On the other hand, Ashton can’t stand rap music, so MK can only sing along to her Drake playlist in the shower. However, crafting the right support system does not happen overnight. We reached out to two of Taft’s most iconic roommate duos, who recalled memorable moments from years of living together and left us with wisdom that they picked up along the way.
While crafting this roommate pair, either the heat of August was getting to Ms. Duffy’s head, and she was just not thinking straight, or she saw potential chemistry between Isaac Obeng and Marcos Santana that no one else would have. Who would have known that a bubbly theater kid like Isaac and the soccer-obsessed, golden-goose-wearing Marcos would be such a power roommate pairing? Although paired by chance, these two hit it off so well that they stuck together until their debut as senior monitors this fall. But even three-year roommates have to smooth out some occasional bumps along the road. One particular bump for Isaac and Marcos came in the form of an old-school HDT window, you know the kind: obnoxiously squeaky with no screen. Marcos is the more warm-blooded of the two and despises a stuffy room, insisting on leaving the windows flung open around the clock. However, top-bunker Isaac recalls vicious attacks from mosquitoes each night when the windows were left wide open. Marcos reassured Isaac that, “if you keep them open, the bugs have a way to get out.” Quite an interesting theory…you may have to make some compromises with your roommate. Finally, Isaac bought some bug spray, Marcos agreed to only open the windows on some nights, and the two remain best friends to this day.
Three-year roomies and co-captains of the Girls Varsity Lacrosse Team, Alexa Blaha and Sofia Smith, are the queens of compromise in our book. Sofia describes that she is “very type A, but Alexa is very type B.” Nevertheless, these two have adapted to each other’s sleep schedules and study habits, even if Sofia has to dig through Alexa’s strewn-about clothes to find her sneakers in time for her morning walk.
While living with someone new can be daunting, reach out, be curious, agree to disagree, have that conversation, open that window, and make an effort! If you form a friendship like Isaac and Marcos’, you may find yourself in tears on your final sleepover before summer, or if you’re as lucky as Sofia and Alexa, you may even meet the “sister” that you never had.
