As the 2023 school year is coming to an end and graduation is just around the corner for our senior class, all the excitement and stress of moving on to college is starting to arise. With college decisions being finalized, many choices are being made. One of those big decisions is who they are planning to room with next year and if that person is going to be a good fit.

A major part of finding a roommate is having the platforms to be able to reach people from all over. Luckily for our generation, social media and technology have made this daunting decision a little bit easier. A major way of finding potential roommates this year has been Instagram pages made for individual colleges’ incoming freshman classes. “A lot of people that I know have been DMing people on Instagram and lots of times the college that you are interested in or going to, you can post on an [Instagram] account and then find people that you have things in common with through that. Then you can reach out to them through Instagram and get in contact and start talking more,” senior Michaela Mergen, who is planning on attending The University of St. Thomas in the fall, said.

Athletes often have a different route to finding roommates because they have their coaches who help connect them with their fellow teammates. This can take the stress of finding a roommate off a future college athlete’s shoulders because they won’t be all alone in this process. “I didn’t have to search for [a roommate], thankfully. When you play sports at Marquette you get help finding a roommate and then get to pick another athlete to be your roommate. So mine is from California. He’s a surfer and seems like a good guy. He’s gonna be my lacrosse teammate too,” senior Carsen Brandt, who will be attending Marquette University to play lacrosse in the fall, said.

Agreeing with Brandt, senior Anna Lervick, who will be attending DePauw University in the fall for track & field as well as volleyball, is also very grateful for her coaches help with finding a roommate. This helps make the college transition just that much easier for these athletes, so they do often understand how non-athletes can be stressed about the decision. “I knew that our coach would help facilitate the sports players finding roommates, so I wasn’t that stressed. But I understand how it can be stressful when you’re all on your own. So yeah, I was very lucky,” Lervick said.

The stress isn’t just on finding a roommate, but also being able to live with them for a whole year in very small and close quarters. You can only get to know someone so much over texting and social media, so oftentimes the dynamic of how the roommate relationship will go also adds stress to graduating high school seniors. “[I do feel some stress] that we won’t have the same things in common and then realize this once we get to college and have already committed to rooming together and started the school year,” Mergen said.

The end of senior year comes with lots of fun times, but also lots of stressful decisions about the future. Finding someone to live with only adds to the stress, but luckily in our world today social media is helping. Nevertheless, the graduating seniors are going to have an amazing time in college no matter what choices are made.