Roommate-to-be

Must admit I am demonstrating a lot of diligence with this blogging thing (it is only been two days, who am I kidding?). Let’s see how long it will last.

Today I heard from my new roommate for the fall. As I had mentioned in my last blog entry, I will be moving to a new town to start graduate school in about two weeks time. I went through my whole undergraduate career living off campus and I had hoped to do the same when I started graduate school. There are several pros and cons to living off campus. On the one side, you don’t have to deal with annoying RA’s and those campus regulations that seem to change with every new semester. The downside is that it does not do much for your social life, especially if you had to move to a new town for school. Unfortunately, living off campus has also meant having to plow my own snow in the wintertime.
This time though, I did not have much of a choice.
The cost of an apartment off campus in the mid-sized suburban town where my new school is situated is prohibitive, almost five times what I am paying for my current apartment. Left with no option, I decided it was time I gave up a few freedoms in the hope of saving a few dollars, by electing to stay on campus.
My soon-to-be roommate and I exchanged a little info over e-mail. I learned that his dad obtained a PhD in my field, something I thought was very interesting. I gave him my reasons for wanting to go into my field and asked him how he likes the school (his program started in the summer). There doesn’t sound like there is much to do there, which does not come as a surprise considering its suburban setting (in case you were wondering, I did not get to visit the school---more on that later).