Living in the Townhouses, Terrace Apartments or (god forbid) The SoCos (so called) means existing with other people in a quasi-house. Conflict is bound to come up. Me and my four roommates Gorgon, Nicheal, Krash, and Pelvin quickly learned that the hard way. After we said goodbye to our parents, suddenly, we were just a bunch of boys, on a deserted island, lords-of-the-flying it, no copilot.
On the first day, we tackled a common problem: how are we gonna customize our TH? I initially suggested that we remove all of the walls upstairs and combine the four upstairs bedrooms into one, sort of like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, an idea that came with an unexpected amount of dissent. In particular, Nichael (of all people) wanted to add more walls to the upstairs so that we could sublet part of the Townhouse to a local Poughkeepsian to help pay rent, a plan Krash strongly agreed with.
This sounded like a less-than-secure plan to me and Gorgon, and so after a six-hour negotiation, we eventually compromised, opting to remove all of the upstairs walls and subletting the downstairs closet, and to sweeten the deal we fulfilled Krash’s request of heightening each of the stairs so that they were easier to crawl up. Additionally, we ended up bunking all of the beds, leaving plenty of multipurpose space for wrestling events and other activities, something everybody was excited about. Just like that, we squashed the beef and are working together to make our Townhouse into a townhome. Lesson learned: make compromises.
A side note: a lot of other Townhouses have been asking to borrow one of our hammers in the first week, but no one has asked to borrow our sledge hammer (maybe saving such projects for later in the semester). A word of advice though: rival Townhouses get really mad if you sledge through the dividing wall by accident, so be careful when you’re decorating the place.
On the second day, we had to address another big question: when are we gonna invite our dads to the house? Naturally, each of us wanted to invite our dads to the Townhouse at various points of the year in the semester. But of course, that conversation led to some dissent once we got into the details. For instance, Krash has two dads and he wanted to invite both of them at the same time, which felt very unfair. To be clear we had a strict “no moms in the house” rule, which we all agreed on, but isn’t it unjust that Krash gets to bring both of his parents to the house when I can only bring one? If that wasn’t bad, Gorgon has three step dads! What’s the fairness in that? Lesson learned: something as simple as everybody naturally wanting to invite their dads to the house can get complicated real quick. Prepare for turbulence.
On day three, we got into yet another conflict! Pelvin accidentally left his ladybug enclosure open one night and suddenly 10,000 ladybugs were swarming the house. This would have been fine if Gorgon’s 33 Eurasian spiders hadn’t also escaped from their cage that same night, a non-native species that could have an outsized ecological impact on the Poughkeepsie area in the next few years. After a few days, the swarm mostly dissipated and four Eurasian spiders were recovered, and so I suggested that we institute a strict 10-insect-per-person limit, grandfathering in Nichael’s existing enclosure of 100 grasshoppers. Pelvin and Gorgon’s wouldn’t talk to me for days after I suggested this but we eventually compromised to a 24-insect-per-person policy with a possible 50-bug-per-person after a three-month probationary period. Lesson learned: keep the pets at home!
While all of these conflicts certainly plagued us, to be honest, the biggest issue with group living has been all of the little problems: small decisions every TH faces, like if we allow shoes in the house, what posters to put on the remaining walls and whether we should use the fridge for storing chemical compounds or food. Me and my four roommates Gorgon, Nicheal, Krash and Pelvin are sure to have more antics in the future, but at the end of the day, we just need to buckle down and work together if anything’s gonna get done, lest Poughkeepsie’s ecology get further wrecked by Gorgon’s 29 Eurasian Spiders at large.