After IV
Finding Your Footing with New Roommates
 
Podcast Intro – (Upbeat acoustic guitar music)

Jon Steele  0:09  
Hey everyone. I'm Jon Steele. And this is After IV,  a podcast for InterVarsity alumni. Life after college is hard. And even a great experience with your University chapter doesn't shield you from the challenges of transition. As we hear stories from real alumni learning how to make it in their posts InterVarsity reality. My hope is that this podcast will offer some encouragement, a few laughs and even some hope for the future. This is After IV. And these are your stories. 

Welcome

Jon Steele
What's up alumni, welcome to After IV, the podcast that's just for you. I'm your host, Jon Steele. It's good to be together again for another episode here. If it's your first time joining us welcome and to you 2023 alumni who are joining us for the very first time, congrats on making it to graduation. And welcome to the podcast. Okay, we're jumping into our next episode of this finding your footing series, and we're talking about how to find your footing with new roommates. Yes, the new roommate. Not all of us will experience this after graduation, but many of us certainly will. And those experiences will range from really great to really not I had a roommate who lost his gloves and took mine instead. Not a big deal, but it's definitely frustrating in the middle of winter. In Minnesota, when you walk to work. I had a roommate who locked me out of our apartment for an entire night. So I had to couch surf. I had a roommate who worked at a pizza joint and got a free pizza every shift, which seems like a dream for this pizza lover, until I learned that he would only ever order Hawaiian pizzas with black olives on them. Who does that? The quality of a roommate can be a real roll of the dice. And that's why we're bringing you this episode. Today. My friend Nicole and I are sitting down to talk about some of our own postgraduation roommate stories and the lessons that we've learned from them. I think at the end of this episode, you'll have some skills to boost your roommate situation overall, and to feel better equipped to be a higher quality roommate yourself. So let's get to it. This one's for you alumni. 

Musical Interlude
 
Interview

Jon Steele
Well, my good friend Nicole, here we are. Welcome to the podcast.

Nicole Carline  2:18  
Thanks, Jon. It's so good to be here.

Jon Steele  2:21  
Oh my goodness. I'm really glad that when I was thinking about this topic that you came to mind, and I was like, Nicole, if she's had roommates, she's got to have some good stories to tell. So I'm excited for us to get to talk about roommate experiences together. Well, hey, would you take just a moment, introduce yourself, let our listeners know who you are and what you do?

Nicole Carline  2:45  
Well, I'm Nicole. I am from Morgantown, West Virginia. Born and raised. Still here. My career is I'm the assistant Area Director for West Virginia with a university Christian Fellowship celebrating 15 years this year, which is

Jon Steele  3:07  
Wow, congratulations!

Nicole Carline  3:09  
Thank you. I also have a few side hustles very West Virginian thing to do is having several side hustles I work as a social media and marketing manager for the local quick lube here in town. I'm also a property manager for my brother's Airbnb. And to top it all off, I just started my own business like in the last two weeks restoring usin broken unbroken roller skates, inline skates and skateboards. Wow. And being able to sell them to the community at a more accessible affordable price. So I dabble.

Jon Steele  3:48  
Yeah, yes. Now is your new business at all inspired by your time in roller derby?

Nicole Carline  3:56  
Maybe a little bit?

Jon Steele  3:59  
Oh, gosh, that's awesome. Okay, so Nicole, we're going to be we're going to be talking about roommates together. So tell me why is it that you have chosen at one time or another to live with roommates?

Nicole Carline  4:13  
Yeah, you know, eventually, as you get older, even if you're single, you need space, right? And being in a house with your family of six people. I have three siblings. Well, I'm the oldest of four. That space is very limited. And as you're all becoming adults becomes very difficult to live together. So it was out of sanity. I needed to find somewhere else to live and honestly, it was out of practicality that I could not afford to live on my own. I needed a roommate. So it started as well. That's just the logical thing to do. If I want to get out of the house and live on my own, I need to find a roommate. But since then it has moreso developed as if I have the space and there's somebody I feel like I can tolerate to live with needs a place to say, Yeah, I want to give them my space that originally is just because I needed help to pay for it.

Jon Steele  5:08  
Totally, there was a drive to be out on your own to develop as an adult needs to be away from family, to some extent away from family.

Nicole Carline  5:17  
I mean, listen, I did my first year of University in Pittsburgh, when I came back to Morgantown, the first year back, I lived with my sister in a house that was about 15 minutes from my parents house. And then she had moved back home because she was going back to school, and I moved back on the hill, I grew up on a stone's throw away from the rest of my family. But it was still my own space, right. So I didn't move very far. And even now, I'm only seven minutes away from my entire family. much, but just a little bit of space.

Jon Steele  5:50  
My reasoning for living with roommates after college, you know, I moved to Minnesota to do my grad work, I lived by myself, because I didn't know anybody. And actually, towards the end of my second year of grad school, I said, you know, I just don't think I'm ever going to have a roommate again, the next time I live with somebody, if I get married, it will be with my spouse. And at least the way that it's mapped out in my brain is that it could not have been more than a week later that a friend calls me and says, Hey, there's this guy. I know he's moved into town. He doesn't know anybody. And you know, I know that you don't have a roommate. So I'm wondering if you would be interested in having a roommate saving some money. And I was just like, come on, seriously. I said, Yes, because saving money did sound really great, even though I had no real interest in in living with somebody again, but I thought, Okay, we'll give this a go. And thus began a very arduous journey of roommate life with the person who did end up being my last roommate until I got married. So let's just tell some stories about roommate experiences, The Good, the Bad, the Ugly. And if we can also try to figure out if there's some sort of do or a don't, that we learned from those experiences, for the sake of trying to end on high notes. Let's start with maybe some of the not so great stories. So Nicole, it doesn't necessarily have to be a nightmare. But tell me about a rough experience that you had with a roommate.

Nicole Carline  7:19  
I fortunately, have never had a nightmare experience. That's good. Minor, silly. I think one of the harder roommates that I had, it was more like your experience of how we met. So my very first roommate, Katie will probably talk about her, she became family to me, my very best friends still is to this day, her kids call me at Nicole, just awesome. She also works for university and had a student who was graduating and needed a place to stay at a spare room opening up. And I was like, Well, I was planning to live alone for a bit, but she seems like a very nice person. So surely, it will be just fine. So she moved in, but we never really clicked. She was a very sweet woman. So nice, so selfless. Maybe that says something about me that somebody so incredible. I couldn't click with her. I don't know.

Jon Steele  8:18  
Maybe you were the hard roommate.

Nicole Carline  8:23  
Maybe I’m the problem! But it was different ways of growing up. And not saying anything negative about it. It was just the way of living of saving things that I would just throw away or like washing out plastic sandwich bags and like, why why did you do that? For sure. She could not sit and watch a movie. She couldn't sit to watch a TV show either. She was constantly moving around. And not that she was disruptive. But the constant movement I'm realizing now was unsettling to me because I felt like I needed to move but I didn't want to. I wouldn't say like intense friction. There was just some like, Okay, we don't drive together. But I think eventually we both resigned to it and said, You know what, it's okay. But I remember this one time. This is one of those silly things. I have a deep aversion to vinegar. Oh, okay. Well, but they cannot stand it, including things with vinegar in it like ketchup salad dressing. I hate it. It makes me want to gag when I smell it. I gag like that's how bad it is. That's serious. So my roommate, you know, Laura's as farm girl, you do things naturally. What's a really good cleaning agent? That's really natural. Oh, yeah, vinegar. White vinegar. Yeah, I came home from work one day and the entire trailer smelled like vinegar. And I wanted to just puke right there. I asked like hey, did you clean with this? And she goes, Oh, yeah, it was all happy and everything and I was like, I will buy you whatever natural cleaning agent you want. That is not vinegar. Never do that again. She was so apologetic because she didn't know in any other issue. I have Just because of assuming I remember she was starting to move out, and I realized I was missing like half of my towels. And I was like, Why do you know where my towels went? She goes, Oh, yeah, I took them to my house as like, what are those are my towels? Just? Well, you have so many of them. I just I didn't think that was a big deal.

Jon Steele  10:21  
That's hilarious.

Nicole Carline  10:23  
Yeah, it was silly things like that. Really? No, they don't matter.

Jon Steele  10:27  
Yeah. Yeah. Is there like a do or a don't that you would say goes along with your experience with this person?

Nicole Carline  10:34  
Well, first, don't assume anything. That is helpful. Later, but talking about things essential. Setting up expectations are essential. And if you feel like those expectations are being violated, even just a little bit, talk about it right then and there and nip it in the bud. Yeah, let it fester. Yes. And knowing it's okay that you don't have to be best friends with every roommate you have.

Jon Steele  11:01  
Especially if you built your roommate cohort out of your like closest InterVarsity friends are the closest people from your program when you were in school, that might feel like a very different experience

Nicole Carline  11:14  
That I could not have that kind of relationship with Laura was really hard for me to reconcile. But once I realized it was okay, it did help a lot.

Jon Steele  11:26  
I think that's really helpful advice. And definitely my experiences. Well, we were both introverts both pretty conflict averse. And I think we both found home base to be very important. But because we didn't know each other home base became these more secluded spaces. He also spent a lot of time in his room, and I spent a lot of time in the living room. But I lived there for almost a month before he made it to town. So I had kind of like set up shop and just was comfortable. I didn't do a good job of being hospitable. One of the stories that comes to my mind, a place that did not go well, where I did not handle conflict very well. It was late at night, I had been talking to my girlfriend on the phone, who's now my wife, Caitlin, and it was one of those were you having a great conversation with somebody you don't want to like pause it so that you can go to the bathroom and come back because just it interrupts the flow of your conversation. So I really gotta go to the bathroom. But I'll just wait. And we wrap up our conversation. Say goodnight. I head into the bathroom. And I realize that the toilet is clogged. I was like, this was not me. I did not do this. But no information was relayed that, hey, we've got a situation here. At that point. We also didn't own a plunger. Oh, no. So what I did rather than talking to him is I drove to Walmart, went to the bathroom, I bought a plunger. I also bought this frilly bow that you would put on a Christmas present. And the receipt for the plunger. I don't know why I felt like it was his responsibility. But I was just mad over the situation. And so outside of the bathroom, I leaned the plunger against the door, and I used the frilly bow to stick the receipt on to the plunger and I left it there as just a little message of like, hey, when this kind of stuff happens, just go ahead and handle it. So the next day I get up, the bathroom is working again. I go off to work. And when I come back from work, the plunger is nestled nicely in the closet in the bathroom. And the receipt and the bow for them are now laying on my bed. That was his response to me. We never spoke of it again. After that moment. I certainly told lots of people about it, of course making him out to be the bad guy. I was a complete moron in the situation. But that's how we handled conflict most of the time was extremely passive aggressive little gifts to each other and things like that. That is so funny. This is reminding me of all of these other moments are like Oh, mutually being terrible roommates to one another.

Nicole Carline  14:08  
Yeah, we're we're not exclusively altruistic with our roommates.

Jon Steele  14:14  
No, absolutely not. As I look back on the plunger situation, I would say even if you are a conflict averse person, which I was the moments that whoever it was, would just say like, I'm going to go into your room and I'm going to talk to you about what's going on. That made such a huge difference. So the don't is don't be passive aggressive like at all costs. Even if your roommate is passive aggressive, break down the barrier, open the door, knock on the door and have a conversation. That's the don't and the dude that comes away from that for me.

Nicole Carline  14:47  
I think what made my very first roommate Katie, who is my very best friend now what made Katie and I worked so well together we had a year or two together as students in InterVarsity and we were like, the best non friends that one could be. We liked each other. However, we didn't click for some reason, and we so badly wanted to be friends together. But anytime we got together to hang out, it was so awkward. So I must be Jesus knowing our future, but we just kept trying. And so when she came on staff, she spent a year up in Pennsylvania. And then she came back to Morgantown and needed a place to stay. I was like, Well, I have an extra room, I could use a roommate to help pay for rent. What do you think? And she was really hesitant. And I said, Katie, let's just sit down and talk. And we can decide from there. So we did we got together, we talked about what our expectations, we talked about our pet peeves, just how we live. Here's a little insight of this is kind of how I use space. Do you wake up in the morning or not? Are you a late night person or not? If I leave the cabinet doors open, is that a problem? That's a problem with me shut the cabinet door is different things like that. And if we feel like an issue is starting to rumble up, let's talk about it. Let's make that expectation. Even if we think it's just us, it's in our heads. It's not a big deal. Talk about it. And after that conversation, she said yes. moved in. And we just had an open line of communication. One instance, dishes, this is always an issue, right? Growing up, my dad would make us wash the dishes clean, and then put them in the dishwasher. Because it's the sterilizer it's not actually a dishwasher. Any dish that had any little scrap of food on it, he would make us rewash it. He did not have the same level. I mean, she wouldn't leave huge chunks of food, but there would be little things of food. Or, God forbid she left ketchup on a plate one time.

Jon Steele  16:52  
Oh, no.

Nicole Carline  16:55  
I refuse to watch it. I just left with the sake. And it was starting to get annoying to me. And I just talked to her. I was like, Katie I'm having a problem. Here is the core of why this is a problem to me. And I talked about how I grew up in the expectation of what a clean dishes and my hatred for ketchup. We made a compromise that from here on out, she would rinse off ketchup, I would wash all the dishes and she would put them away. Oh, nice. And that was that was what we did for the rest of the time. And it was fantastic.

Jon Steele  17:26  
Well, it sounds like from the beginning, you both recognize we're not totally sure if this is going to work. So let's sit down and actually talk through some of our expectations and what we're bringing to the table.

Nicole Carline  17:36  
Are we sharing food? Yeah, are we doing bills, all of those things are super important to talk about.

Jon Steele  17:42  
Yes. And that those check ins continued as they were needed. Something's not going right here. Let's talk about it before it goes off the rails. And we've got a problem. I mean, it feels like for whoever you're living with best friends or total newbie, that establishing those things together and continuing to get to know each other is huge. As I think about one of the things that was most positive, even with the same roommate experience is when we created something together. And it doesn't have to be that you're creating something together. But that we had a combined vision towards something that we were working together on. And it was unbelievable. We talked, we actually spent time together. And we we actually made something that we were really proud of that we wanted to invite other people in to experience with us. And at least for the season that we were doing that when we had a combined vision towards a goal together. It was like, it feels like we're moving in the direction of friendship here. And like you said, with Laura, you don't have to become best friends with this person. But is there something that does bring you together, it creates space for you to communicate. You know, once a week, we make an eat dinner together. We're having this collaborative experience. We're talking at the table, and then we go back to our own thing, but it makes sure that we are having a regular checkpoint together. And it makes it feel like we are people in the space together not just roommates living in different rooms that pass each other in the hallway every now and then.

Nicole Carline  19:11  
Yeah, that was so good. Katie and I there were two things that we did together that we had fun with. Both of us desired to run more. And I had this big whiteboard and we turned it into a calendar. But we didn't want just a boring like, yeah, we ran. So we made little stick figures of that day's run. Okay, so we would go and run and then we would come back and I had my dog so we would make little stick figures of us with the dog in that date. And then the next day, if we found something interesting on the run, we would do like a little drawing of whatever it is. And then when one of us wasn't around, we come back and see what the other one had been doing because they continue. So same thing. We had that purpose together. We wanted to help each other be healthier, but we Found a fun way to try to keep us accountable to do it. And then the second, we made lists, just for fun. So when we were bored, we would come up with lists like things to do when you want to procrastinate for work, and one of them was called elevator music to hell. Oh, my God, Christmas music. And we kept all these lists on refrigerator. And every once in a while, we'll add to it, the silly things like that.

Jon Steele  20:33  
I think that those are really great points for us to carry with us, again, have like, you don't have to be best friends, but you can be collaborative in some way. And that that can help sort of ease the tension and develop some memory or Yeah, some report in some way of communicating. And that that helps build some sort of cohesion, you know, until the time that your season of living together is done. And that that can make something more tolerable and less painful. I feel like we've developed some things here that are helpful. Nicole, one of the things that we like to do on the show is that we ask our guests to give a parting piece of advice, whether it's related to a roommate life, or just in general, do you have a parting piece of advice that you would give to somebody who is about to step into this new season of life after graduation?

Nicole Carline  21:24  
Yes, I have three pieces of advice that I wish I would have done myself after graduating. Okay, great. Let's hear him. Start counseling ASAP if you have not already, I am a big proponent of counseling. I think everybody should do counseling at some point in their life. Especially when you're in a stage of transition like this, it is important to have a place where you can go and just talk things out and have somebody listen and somebody to help you process. Beckett just as important. Find a community. College is such a unique and special experience because it is gives you built in community you want to sport you just go find a sport and and join them you want a worship community, you go join University, anything of interest, there's a group out there for them, like it's already there. When you leave college, those things are a lot harder to find. University also spoils us because you have that spiritual connection with these people that you go through college life with together you have the shared experience, you have the shared purpose of mission on campus of valuing scripture study, and then you leave college and you try to find a church and they don't value the same things, or their way of community is different than what you're used to in college, which is most churches, quite honestly, it's really hard to find a place that has that kind of lived in community that you would with campus ministry. So do the work, to find a community early, be it in a church, which I highly, highly recommend finding a church, but also get a hobby, like as part of your community building. Don't pour all your time into the church. Jesus doesn't call us just to serve the church, he calls us to create disciples, He calls us to minister to the world, right to have relationship with people to share God's love with people. I do believe he calls us to the church, but he also calls us to the people in our communities. And I think there's something really beautiful about building relationships through hobbies, and building connections with people who may not believe the same thing that you do. And giving an opportunity to help them see that there are Christians out there that are not crazy for the Lions. That's a good word. I think, you know, we just live in a rough time. And there's a lot of assumed perceptions of what all Christians are like very broad brushstrokes. And it's just not true. Like every community. It's just not true. So, find a hobby, something you enjoy doing. Go find other people that enjoy doing it too. They're out there, just look for it. That's why I joined roller derby. I was so invested in the Christian community. I was going to church I had in varsity. My entire community were Christian people. And Cypher maybe like one or two friends from college that I still stayed in touch with. And here I am and university staff worker telling my students they need to go share the gospel with their friends, they build need to build relationships with non Christians, and I'm not doing that myself. How hypocritical great and I came to a place where I miss team sports. I recognize that I don't have non Christians in my life and I sought out Derby and it's One of the best things I ever choose to do, I've got to have several spiritual conversations with my teammates. They've been able to care for me and some of the worst times in my life in the last couple of years in ways that I haven't experienced in other places, quite honestly. They're not just my teammates, they're, they're truly such wonderful friends of mine, and have taught me so much about life and people, and how to love people, even when you think differently. So counseling, find a community, get a hobby.

Jon Steele  25:37  
That's awesome. I love it. That's such great advice. I'll admit I've not done counseling. The other two, though, I can certainly speak to that. That is absolutely. And that those two can oftentimes coincide with each other. Finding a hobby and doing it in community can be really, really awesome. Wow, Nicole, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much for joining me for sharing stories. I mean, for helping us I feel like cover a broad spectrum of roommate experiences, not just sort of the best in the worst, we had these, you know, it didn't start off great. But it became something really awesome. Or it started off poor and it ended up somewhere in the middle like we ended on good terms. We've got the ones that are just rough and and the ones that are great. And that's been really nice. And also enlightening. I think for both of us. Yes, we've done some self reflecting some of these stories that I that I was going to tell that really started off in my mind with somebody else being the bad guy. Then I'm like, oh, wait a second.

Nicole Carline  26:35  
I was the bad guy!

Jon Steele  26:37  
Plot twist! 

Nicole Carline  26:42  
Oh, gosh, this, this has been fun. This is so fun. Thank you for inviting me. And it's just great chatting and getting to, like you said, just getting to reflect on some of this stuff.

Jon Steele  26:56  
Absolutely. Well, thanks for saying yes, it's been fun. It's been fun to do something like this with a friend. That's for sure. 

Nicole Carline  27:00
Yes, absolutely. 

Musical Interlude
 
Wrap up

Jon Steele  27:05
So I think we have a few takeaways from this conversation that can help us as we step into a new roommate situation after graduation. First and foremost, and I'm not sure this comes as a shock to any of us. But communication has to be central to the relationship. You need to start talking and keep talking. And don't just say okay, we're committed to talking through problems when they come up. I mean, that's better than nothing. But you've already started too late at that point, when you first move in, and preferably before you even move in, sit down and map out what it's going to be like to live together just like Nicole and Katie did. And then make a schedule for continuing to check in. Communicate early, communicate often. Second, when something goes wrong, and something inevitably will go wrong. Don't be passive aggressive. Refer to TAKEAWAY NUMBER ONE and talk it over immediately. Although the plunger story still makes me laugh when I think about it today, I recognize that my passive aggressive approach did nothing but harm my roommate relationship. So do as I say and not as I do when you face a problem with your roommate. Finally, as Nicole said, you don't have to be best friends, that doesn't have to be your aim. But do find something that you and your roommate can collaborate on. Make and eat dinner once a week, play a video game, put a puzzle together, go on a walk, read and discuss a book once a month, it doesn't really matter what it is, but find some avenue for building rapport and having a common goal. At the very least it means you'll have some amount of trust built up to help you navigate the difficult moments together. And who knows, it could even lead to a real friendship. Living with new roommates is something many of us need to do after graduation. And that can be scary, especially in a new place with people we've never met before. But it doesn't have to be a lonely nightmare. It can be a really positive experience. And I hope these ideas can help make that happen for you. And I'll also say as someone who has been married for nearly a decade, these ideas will also be a huge help if you ever find yourself living with your forever roommate. Keep that in mind. Nicole, thanks so much for hanging out with me for this episode. I'm glad I had a friend like you along for the ride as I realized what a crappy roommate I was. Darn it. For the rest of you. If you have a great roommate story. Let us hear about it on Instagram. Then be sure to come back next week for my conversation with Antonio Shapiro, a pastor with a couple decades of church ministry in his resume who's going to help us understand how to find a healthy church in this new season of life. Thanks for tuning in. I will see you in the After, Alumni!

Podcast Outro – (Upbeat acoustic guitar music)

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. Alumni. If there was anything that you learned, really enjoyed, or they encouraged you from today's episode, would you send us a DM or tag us in a story? We'd love to hear about it. You can find us @afterivpod on Instagram and Facebook. And if you haven't already, take just a second to unlock your phone and subscribe to the podcast. If your platform lets you leave us a rating and a review. And if you'd like What we're doing here share us with your InterVarsity or other post graduation friends thanks again for listening and I will see you in the After, Alumni!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai