Is living with your friends a bad idea?
A column piece
Flatmates – whether chosen or randomly assigned – have the potential to shape our university experiences. As we creep toward the halfway point of the academic year, conversations over next year’s housing are beginning to pop up, from freshers scoping out the atmate market to second and third years wondering if they still want to live together. During this season, an inevitable question arises: Is living with your friends a bad idea? The answer is a polarising one, often answered by horror stories of ruined friendships, or, in some cases (mine included), by people insisting it was their best decision.
Living with your friends can be messy and occasionally, it can test you. But when home is a 6000-kilometer ight away, it can be quite important to build a new one. Nothing cheers me up after a di cult day at university quite like coming home to nd my atmates in the kitchen – eating dinner together in front of the TV, inevitably rewatching an episode of Sex and the City, and basking in the feeling of comfort and belonging they bring. But this closeness doesn’t appear overnight; it needs to be cultivated.
This cultivation involves nding suspicious amounts of shed hair in unexpected places, as the reality is that living together slowly melts away the shiny gloss of friendships. You are exposed to each other’s worst habits, eccentricities and o days. It requires you to navigate differences, negotiate shared spaces, and establish boundaries you didn’t know you needed. It can be uncomfortable... but maybe that’s the point.
Your twenties, especially the years spent at university, are a training ground. These years are a period of beta testing to practice communication, compromise, and coexistence, to x any bugs before the stakes are higher. Living with your friends teaches you to love and accept them honestly, not just conveniently.
So, is living with your friends a bad idea? Sometimes it is, yes. But sometimes it becomes something else entirely. It can become your shared home and village. It may be a version of belonging you don’t realise you need until you’re cleaning someone else’s hair out of the shower drain.
