Some people can’t stand the thought of living alone, and others couldn’t get enough of it. In this podcast, you can expect to hear some of the craziest roommate stories - from dissecting roadkill to poisoning roommates. There will be news stories and some feature stories of people sharing their personal experiences. Just when you thought you had bad roommates, wait until you hear these stories.

Intro And They Were Roommates

Intro starts playing:

*girls laughing*
Nadja: “Can you guys keep it down? I’m trying to record a podcast.”
Girl #1: “Noooo”
*girl #2 laughs*

Music comes into the background

“Have you ever had a roommate that drove you nuts? Or had a roommate that ended up being your maid of honor? Well for some, it was both. Living with roommates in your twenties can be some of the best or the worst times of your life. I’m here to tell you all about the good, the bad and the ugly to having roommates. My name is Nadja and you’re listening to And They Were Roommates.”

Music fades out

Nadja: 

University of Hartford freshman Brianna Brochu couldn’t help but brag about finally getting her roommate Chennel Rowe to move out. 

For about a month and a half, Brianna was putting moldy clam dip in Chennel’s lotions, rubbing used tampons on her backpack, and inserting Chennel’s toothbrush where the sun doesn’t shine. 

Chennel audio clip from Facebook: 

At the same time she says she’s done so much more. 

I don’t know the “so much more”. 

I’ve been using my toothbrush for how long. 

It got to the point where I had extreme throat pain. 

I couldn’t sleep, to the point where I couldn’t speak. 

Nadja: 

On October 28, 2017, Brochu was arrested on several charges. 

Similarly, this past December at Former Leigh University, international student Yukai Yang was charged with attempted homicide towards his roommate. 

Over the span of few months, Yang was putting small amounts of thallium into his roommate’s food, drinks, and mouthwash. 

What precautions could universities take to make the roommate process more thorough? 

At this point, students can only hope their future roommate doesn’t want to poison them.

Ep. 1 - Newsworthy Roommates

Nadja Jauregui (Host): Hello everyone and welcome to episode 2 of And They Were Roommates. Today is March 17th and we are going to be diving into Duke’s crazy new roommate rule, and two special guests will be coming on to share their crazy roommate stories.
  
*Short Transition music* 

Right now I’m here with the lovely Lauren Mack and she’s been with the same crazy roommate for three years now. Lauren and her roommate met freshmen year by living across the hall from each other. They chose to be roommates sophomore year and ever since then, they have remained roomates despite all the craziness.

Lauren Mack:
She’s a control freak, let’s just get down to that. She’d come down the stairs and yell at us because the music was too loud. 

* audio clip of music playing and it getting cut off* 

And I was like girlfriend, it is Friday night. Like what are you doing? Recently, about a few months ago, one of my roomates and I, we uh went to the rainbow kitten surprise party. We had a good time, came back and we were surprised that we were locked out of our house! We never lock our doors so this is like crazy. So I rang that doorbell *doorbell sound effect* fifty plus times I would say. And she doesn’t answer, we call her like five billion times. So we had to call one of my friends sorority sisters and she luckily let us sleep at her house. She was mad at us like for even accusing her of locking us out, but we NEVER lock our doors. And then a few months later, so one of my friends had a guy over or whatever. So she let him out and locked the door so he wouldn’t come back in. And then we hear a doorbell *doorbell sound effect* and we’re like oh my goodness like that’s the GUY! I’m gonna open the door and like answer it. And it was actually Maggie - our other roommate - and she was like since when do you close or lock the door whatever blah blah. In our heads, we were so dumbfounded because she locked us out two months later! I don’t even know, it was just so crazy. I don’t..I don’t even know..So I’m graduating, and I’ll probably room by myself. *laughs*


Host:
Duke University made headlines when they announced that incoming freshmen will be assigned roommates at random. Duke’s reasoning for the change is to enforce students to break out of their “cultural bubbles” and bring diversity to the campus. While the intentions of this change are true, many students would beg to differ that having no say in their roommate can be a good thing. Melissa Reyes went to Northeast Community College and she has a very strong opinion on random roommates. 
 
Melissa Reyes:
So I thought “Well I can get her to open up to me if I can invite her to the movies. And I invited her with all my friends, and it was only like five of us. And I paid for her ticket and everything. She thanked me, but when we got inside, she sat on the opposite side of the theater than us. And my friend asked her to come over to sit with us and she just refused and sat where she was *laughs*. So we went to buffalo wild wings. She answered with yes and no even though it wasn’t a yes or no question, and everytime she ate she’d always hum. Just like when she took a bite, or even took a drink of water, she was just like mmm - mmm - mmm! I just tried talking to her and she would just look at me, she wouldn’t even answer me sometimes. I felt like she was annoyed by me. She asked me if we were still gonna be roomates for the next semester and when she asked me, I was just..I was just mind blown. I was shook that she would even consider us rooming together again. Obviously not everything is going to fit perfect, but just putting two random people together..you’re just asking for chaos. 

Host:
Thanks for tuning in and make sure to catch the next episode where we hear about a girl whose roommate brought roadkill home. I’m Nadja Jauregui, and you were listening to And They Were Roommates.

Ep. 2 Asking For Chaos

Host: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 3 of And They Were Roommates. Today is April 11th and I’m your host Nadja Jauregui. Today we have special guest here to share their crazy roommate who dissected dead animals - for fun. Lily Camp attends Union University and her roommate was chosen at random by their school. It didn’t take long for Lily to realize that her roommate choice could not have been any worse. 

Lily: So basically, I knew it was gonna be a bad time because on move in day - I had not been there twenty minutes - and her dog peed on the floor, and she told me to clean it up. Well then, we have a lot of spiders in our dorm. I don’t know where they came from but they were there. She would collect them. She would put them in jars and keep them in her room. She had like thirty of them - they were like brown recluses. And I didn’t think it could get any worse. I went into my dorm to get some stuff, and she was using my pans and my pots that I use to cook food and she found these dead animals on the road like rats and stuff and she was just dissecting them. She would fill some up with water and she would have like a dead rat, and she would put like its insides into the bowl. And I was just like ‘This is something a serial killer would do you know’? Like she’s gonna come after me next. 

Host: Lily and her roommate were asked to fill out a simple questionnaire at the beginning of the year containing questions such as “are you neat or messy?”, “are you a light or heavy sleeper”.. These questions alone could not have guaranteed a perfect match, and ever since then Lily has not wanted to risk her chances with another random roommate. 

Lily: It was kind of just always downhill. So I would try to talk to her, have conversation. And she was just like - she didn’t talk. She would like make bird noises, and I couldn’t have conversations. That whole time my mom was like ‘I can’t wait for this semester to be over so you can get out away from her.’ I’ve actually got people that I’m trying to room with next semester that I already know. That was just the worst thing. I don’t want that to ever happen again. If you need weight loss tips, room with her because I think I lost ten pounds from losing my appetite every single day.

Host: Tune in next week to hear roommate stories with a happy ending for a change. I’m Nadja Jauregui and you were listening to And They Were Roommates

Roadkill Roommate

Before I even stepped foot onto campus, I got sent an email to fill out a basic questionnaire basically teling what kind of roommate I am. A few months later, I get an email that I got paired with a roommate. Her name was Magda, and she was from Poland. And this was gonna be her first time ever coming to the US. Even though I was super excited to have a roommate from out of the country, I was nervous that our cultures would clash or the language would be an issue. 

So move in day came. I felt like I was gonna throw up because I didn’t know anyone. I was so scared that I wasn’t gonna make any friends. The day I moved in, I found out that my roommate was literally waiting for me. She’d moved in three days earlier and was all alone. 

Magda: It was so empty. So I just started organizing my stuff, started unpacking my stuff. Sometimes I would feel scared because I wasn’t sure if I should like lock the door or not really.

Nadja: Once I opened up that door, we immediately hugged and greeted each other. It was like we were long-lost friends, and at the moment, I knew we were gonna be best friends. 

*Play music*

I can’t say it was one thing that made time with Magda so special - it was just a feeling...like nighttime. (play crickets/nighttime sounds)

Our nights were filled with late night talks keeping us up hours past our bedtime. 

Magda: Ugh, I love our nights together. Especially those late nights. I was literally thinking about it that “Okay i need to get up tomorrow, we need to go to sleep, no more talking. Then I was just saying goodnight to you and then you would start something and then you..i don’t know. We would just talk about random stuff and then we would get into it. Then we are getting more and more awake, which was obviously it was fun. I still miss it. Like, it makes you feel good. 

Nadja: We would sit on her bed and watch movies on her laptop. We watched Paddington once because Magda said it was hilarious. We didn’t laugh once. The smell of grease was sure to fill our room with our late night food runs to Checkers..which we regretted the next morning thanks to our 8 ams. As much as we both loved music, we had very different tastes. She loved anything that came on the radio, and I loved anything that wasn’t on the radio. Magda played the song Closer by the Chainsmokers everyday for at LEAST 3 weeks and it would drive me nuts. Everytime I hear that song come on the radio now I think of her. 

She made going to school in a different state bearable because she made it feel like home. We were each others shoulders to cry on and biggest supporters. Whenever I got a job as a photographer for downtown club, she would go with me as much as she could and stay with me until the VERY end. Meaning she stayed by my side until 2 am which was when I got paid. What made it more meaningful to me was the fact that all my work nights were Thursday nights. So you know that we had to wake up early Friday morning to go to our classes.  

Oh and we love teaching each other things. We practiced the cup song for hours one night trying to nail it. *insert cup song* And at one point she actually tried to teach me some Polish and in return I tried to teach her how to twerk. I’ll leave that to your imagination.

I wouldn't be scared to ask her any crazy request. Like I could literally ask her, and I did - I asked her ‘Hey do you want go to this bakery with me that’s opening up tomorrow? We gotta get up at like six am but the pastries look amazing.’ And she’s like yeah! That sounds really cool!

That’s what really made us click. We loved spending our time together and we loved doing the same things. We just wanted to have fun and that’s all there was to it. Friendship doesn’t have to be so complicated and full of drama. It just has to be a simple relationship where our main goal is having fun together.

Two Worlds Apart

We spend all our lives trying to find love and the meaning of it. Maybe the answer was right in front of us all along. Here are the words and experiences of everyday people and their personal take on the meaning of love.

Emotional Love Song by Roby Ardiyansah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0FT1...

Presented by EDM Royalty Free - Music For Content Creators
Licensed under Creative Common License

Stories of the Public