As I was picking the tomatoes out of the tomato-bean-corn-random-sauce-weird-white-vegetable-mix at the salad bar in the cafeteria, I began eavesdropping on a conversation two girls standing beside me were having.

“Where were you a few minutes ago? I tried to find you for lunch,” asked one of them.

“Oh, we were in Julia’s room with the door closed,” the other explained. “We didn’t want anyone to know we were in there.”

“Why not?”

“We were talking about the living situation.”

“Ohh,” said the first girl, with a sigh of total understanding. “It was a secret meeting.”

Every person in Upper Rez seems to have the same New Year’s resolution: find someone to live with. In fact, this seems to be the hottest topic of discussion for every student living in residence. Where in the beginning of the year, the trite question was “Where are you from?” and “What program are you in?”, the oh-so-crucial query of “Who are you living with?” seems to have taken its place.

“That’s all I hear,” says B.J. Leipsic, a first-year student in Upper Rez.

“‘Who are you living with?’ or ‘Who aren’t you living with?'” adds Hart Stitz, Leipsic’s roomie-to-be.

These questions are causing much stress, anxiety and awkwardness among residents, who are all attempting, in some way or another, to negotiate living arrangement plans for next year. The question everyone keeps asking is, “Who should I live with?”

Finding a match

Before you can get engaged for what is likely to be a three-year marriage with roommates, you need to find a fiancé, or in many cases, fiancés. The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to live with someone you just met (meaning an engagement with a person you’ve known for four months or less), or with someone you knew pre-McGill.

Living with someone you know means you won’t get any after-move-in surprises, since you are likely to already be aware of all their weird and annoying habits. You can usually be more certain of your compatibility.

For many students in Upper Rez, however, this is not an option, meaning many will inevitably choose to live with someone they’ve only recently met. The dilemma then becomes finding the perfect mate. Many choose to live with those they’ve gotten closest to.

“They’re the two people I spend the most time with so it seemed like the logical thing to do,” says Leigh O’Neil, who has decided to move in with her two best friends in residence.

But living with best friends may not always be the wisest thing to do. Jordanna Kapeluto, who lives in O’Neil’s building, has decided against living with many of the friends she’s made at school.

“I get along well with the person I’m living with,” she explains. “We have similar living styles; we’re similar people. There are other people who are great friends but I can’t see myself living with them.”

The consensus is that, before considering your friendship with a potential roomie, you must first consider your living compatibility and habits. If you also happen to be the best of friends, then it’s a bonus, but it shouldn’t be your primary concern.

So how does one find a person with similar habits? The first place to look is on your own floor. Natalie Andrusiak of Molson Hall has decided to live with people from her floor purely because she knows she can live with them.

“We’re pretty much living with each other now; we see each other everyday,” she shares. “On the whole, nothing’s really changing.”

Erica Bernstein, who lives on the same floor, is also choosing to live with her immediate neighbours for a simple reason.

“We live together now and I know we don’t fight,” she explains, adding that she also knows she can share clothes with her selected roommates.

So it seems the floor is the popular place to pick up roommates. But what about those who aren’t so fortunate and aren’t having luck with the floor? The trick is to ask around, be they friends on other floors, in other buildings, out of rez or even people you don’t know who are looking for roomies.

Full house

The dilemma doesn’t stop at the decision about who to live with, but also includes the question of how many to live with. Here, the jury is split.

“Two is a good number,” upholds Leipsic. “With three, one person is left out, and four is just a mess.”

Grayson Barke, who lives four floors above him, disagrees.

“The more you live with, the better, because the less the cost.”

My rules work as follows:

Two in an apartment: You better know this person super well and be sure you get along with them because there ain’t nobody to rescue you.

Three: Third wheel. In any situation there’s always someone excluded. Just be prepared for constant team switching.

Four: an ideal number. Too many people for there to be anyone left out, but not enough people for it to be chaotic. Plus, when you get sick of one person, you can surely find another to play with.

Saying “I do”

This seems to be the hardest for most students. The easiest way seems to be the casual approach. O’Neil’s engagement became official when her two best friends and her were talking about moving out of rez and one of them just said, “Why don’t we all live together?”

Kappeleto, too, went for the casual approach:

“I just said, ‘I have a place in the works. Would you be interested?'”

Another U0 student, who asked to remain anonymous, didn’t even have to bother with planning an approach:

“I never said anything. It was implied. One of us just said one day, ‘We need to start looking for a place.'”

However you decide to ask, be prepared that you may not get the answer you want or the proposee may need time to think it over. If someone can’t live with you, it doesn’t mean they can’t be friends with you, so don’t take it personally. And there are no guarantees that they won’t break off the proposal. At this time of year, more than one suitor may be pursuing your roommate of choice, so all you can do is hope. Or, you can do as Bernstein and her roommates-to-be did: pinkie-swear on it.

There’s always divorceFinding a roommate shouldn’t be as stressful as residents make it out to be. It’s true things may not work out if you choose the wrong roommate, but the risk is necessary in a situation where you’ve only known people a mere four months. It’s impossible to be sure; you’ve got to take a chance. And if, once you move in, it doesn’t end up working, just remember: there’s always divorce.