Ada Potter

We all gathered from Cape Cod, Mass. and Brooklyn, N.Y. and Belfast, Maine and Vienna, Austria as mere strangers up 57 stairs (we counted) to the bare white walls of Appleton Hall room 405, unknowing of the home it would soon become.

Before going into college, everyone always tells you about the random roommate horror stories that happened to their best friend’s cousin or their neighbor’s aunt. Bowdoin is not like big universities where you browse social media pages to select your picture-perfect roommate; instead, you must put your trust in a vague questionnaire to determine your first college friends.

As the first few weeks of our first year passed by, we all individually navigated adjusting to our new lives as Bowdoin students. Each of our unique interests pulled us in very different directions, both in academics and afternoon activities. We were not immediately all the best of friends. We were not all attached at the hip from the moment we stepped onto campus. But we came home each night to the same four walls. We worked to build our friendship because we cared about making our shared space somewhere we wanted to be and filled with people we wanted to be with.

Now, in our fourth year of living together, we have become like our own little family unit. At times we get into tiffs like siblings over silly matters or we go long periods of time without seeing each other, but we always fall right back into the ways things have always been, living in unity together in the cozy homes we have created.

Year after year we have pulled out more or less the same set of decorations, hanging Christmas lights around the perimeter of our common rooms because we all despise overhead lights, putting Taylor Swift and Billy Joel records on the walls and picking out a version of basically identical Mexicali Blues tapestries. There is a predictability to our lives together, but not in a monotonous way, rather, a comforting one. Because it’s a special feeling to know people so well that you each can sense who is arriving at the door based on the weight of their footsteps and their grip on the handle. To walk through the doors and be able to shed the weight of the day and just be is something unique.

I am just one-fourth of our room, and so rather than continuing to tell you about the three people that have come to mean the most to me here, I want you to hear from them too. But first, some brief introductions. Lily is our resident city girl, born and raised in the Big Apple, Ada is the Mainer from just an hour and change north of Bowdoin and Delaney is from all the way across the Atlantic.

So, here’s a little rundown of our chat.

“When I was coming into college, I was definitely very nervous about getting random roommates. But we really made our room like our own little house. And now it’s a very special thing that since we’ve lived together for so many years, it really feels like a family relationship. Friendship with those you live with is very different from other relationships because you see them at their worst and their best and everything in between,” Delaney said.

“I think one of the most important things about living with someone is the feeling that you can be yourself around them, especially since the space you share is equally both of yours. Adjusting to college can be hard for everyone in so many different ways and so feeling comfortable is necessary. Even if you are so utterly different from your roommates, if you just feel like you can be yourself around them, then don’t let that go so easily!” Ada said.

“College is a very unique time in your life when you get to live with friends and us living four consecutive years together is probably something that is never going to happen again. It’s very meaningful that through everything, we all stuck together and have watched each other grow through all the ups and downs over the years. I feel very thankful that we did it all together,” Lily said.

Not every random rooming pair is going to work; many do not. But I urge you not to write off the people who you were placed with too quickly. Embrace the little bit of chaos that comes with living with one, two, three or even four people you’ve just met. Your lives together are going to be a bit clunky and a bit messy at times, but embrace it. Put thoughtful effort into really knowing who the people are who share the same four walls as you, because you never know—maybe you will be the next random roommate success story.

Ella Ferrucci is a member of the Class of 2026.