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San Diego State student changes roommates six times

By Maggie Grainger

May 8, 2006

San Diego--Ask anyone who’s ever shared an apartment or dorm if they’ve had a roommate from hell and the answer will likely be an adamant “Yes!”

Be it as a freshman in the dorms or as a twenty-something year old trying to deal with a flaky friend, the number of people who have dealt with an annoying flat mate is high. Many people say they learned a lot about themselves after their hellish roommate experience—the number one lesson being: It doesn’t pay to be overly nice to someone who’s making your life a living nightmare.

If anyone should know this lesson, it’s Khouloud Elmasri, a senior at San Diego State.

From the outside everything about Elmasri’s life seems perfect. She was recently elected by her peers to be the vice president of external affairs for the SDSU Associated Student body and is on track to graduate with two majors. She said she has had an amazing college experience, but if there is one thing she would change about it, it would definitely be the number of times she’s had to move.

Elmasri says that at times she feels like she holds a world record of sorts—she has moved more than six times in three and a half years—a major hassle that’s added a lot of stress to her already busy schedule.

Elmasri said her roommate troubles started during her freshman year when she was matched up with someone completely incompatible.

“With my first dorm mate I think we both knew after two weeks of living together that it wasn’t going to work out,” she said. “After we got over the fake niceness everyone does in the beginning we went our separate ways.”

Kristina Maxwell, who works in SDSU’s housing division, said roommates are placed together randomly by computer based on information they fill out in a questionnaire. SDSU places more than 3500 students a year in on-campus housing, including all of the dorms and the Villa Alvarado apartments located near campus.

“We don’t have problems with people very often,” she said. “If there is a problem we encourage residents to go through many steps before the two actually physically move. We’re at one-hundred percent occupancy so there usually isn’t a place for them to switch to.”

Elmasri said she lucked out because she found another girl on her floor that also wasn’t happy with her living arrangements. After all four roommates sat down with their resident advisor they were able to reach a compromise.

“In the end it worked out very well,” she said. “I don’t think I would’ve had the same (freshmen year) experience if I hadn’t found a way to get out of the situation.”

While Elmasri lived out the rest of the year relatively roommate drama-free, she said the following two years were full of unexpected stress.

“I lived with girls I knew from the dorms my sophomore year and people really change when they are completely on their own,” she said. “I had to share a room with someone and it was annoying because her boyfriend was over all the time. Eventually, I would just lock them out so they had to sleep in the living room.”

She said she lived with the girls for about seven months before she decided to move out and live with strangers.

“All of my other friends were already locked into their leases, so I was kind of stranded,” she said.

At first, just the idea of living with people she didn’t know scared Elmasri, but she said she found a place where the rent was reasonable and she got her own room. The only disadvantage was that, due to her busy schedule and age differences, she never felt like she really got to know the girls she was living with.

Elmasri was forced to move once again when several of her new roommates graduated.

“I always moved at random times so there was never anyone I knew that I wanted to move in with,” she said. (continued)

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