In college there are two fearful, dreadful, defeating words that will determine what quality of life you will possess for the next few months while you attend a school far from this place you once called home. These words are scribed in an email mere weeks before you move into this foreign place you will soon call home: forced triple. Does that mean exactly what is sounds like?
A forced triple is a room that is most likely smaller than your room at home hosted with three people, two in bunk beds, one in a lofted bed with a desk underneath. You may be thinking I could not even handle my mom, sister, step-brother, elderly aunt or old distant relative who lives in my house, but not even in my room. How can I possibly handle two more human people in the same room as me?
Well, fellow reader, step by step we are going to analyze what it is like of having three creatures in one hundred and twenty square feet, loaded with clothes, skis, guitars, books and of course food (because dining halls are gross.)
Once you receive this email, your first reaction may be to frantically dial dad's work phone and tell him NOT to pay tuition because you may be better off living with him and mom for another couple of years and figuring "stuff" out.
But, behold after some intense arguing and plentiful bribes from your parents, you are off to this place called college!
When you arrive to this tall run down building, you will walk into the room where this stranger is unpacking his/her things, this stranger who called dibs on the single bed and desk with the window view. You smile as his/her mom and dad talks about how when they were in college, their best friend to this day was their first roommate. You can taste the awkwardness because of these high expectations that are inevitably set by mom and dad, but smile nonetheless as your mom talks with your new roommate's mom about this place called college and you wait for this third stranger to claim the last bed and desk.
Once all of your parents leave, you will get dinner with these two strangers with whom you talk about this place you once called home and all your high school activities that seem terribly outdated now. You will pretend to be interested in their ever so bland lives, chipping in with questions about their hometown you have never heard of. In all forced triples it is inevitable that two roommates will become better friends, and one will be left out. Note to reader: try to be one of the friends.
The year begins with your five classes that run ok, and for the first time in a long time you think, hey, maybe I can do this. But then you find out that one of your roommates is one of those people who stays up all night and sleeps all day- and he/she thinks it is socially acceptable to microwave popcorn at three o'clock every morning. And your other roommate finds his/her soulmate in the first week of college and decides that he/she will be moving in to this 120 square feet with you and your other roommate, who so clearly does not care. You tell yourself to be cool, but it is increasingly hard to be something you are not.
Slowly, you start spending less time in your room, and more time in the library, more time in friends room and more time generally out of that space you sleep, only when you have no where else to go.
The forced triple is a room filled to the brim with things. It is a place where there is always someone there if you need to talk. It is a place where there are pictures of what was, and sticky notes and books telling you what to study. The forced triple is a way of college life, the way of college life most students would not dream of having it any other way. The forced triple is home.
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