How do I deal with a horrible roommate?

[Yona Ross]

I'm a college student and I share a studio apartment with one other female. I am very busy, with an intensive course of study involving a major and a double minor, a relationship that's going on three years, a part time job, a collegiate athletic team, two club leadership positions, and volunteering in two or three different capacities on a weekly basis. My roommate is pre-med, so she is also smart and busy, but out of the two of us, I think I'm clearly more involved on campus. She hardly EVER leaves the room and this frustrates me because it means I get no privacy, even though I'm gone a lot, meaning she has ample privacy. Sometimes this frustrates me. Even when my boyfriend is over, she can't take a hint and won't leave. Often, she gets offended if I don't invite her when my boyfriend and I go out together.

This semester she has been acting more and more bizarre. Sometimes she will give me the silent treatment for days, even though I consider myself a nice person and have no idea what I've done. This hurts my feelings because last year when we were freshmen and roommates together, we were best friends. My roommate has a medical condition that doesn't allow her to drive, so I'm responsible for taking her on any errands we need to run. I furnished most of the apartment, and we share groceries. I'm fine with all of this because like I said, I consider her a good friend and she is pressed for money sometimes.

Yesterday, she asked me to go to on on-campus event that would last about three hours with her and some of our other friends. I explained that I couldn't go because I had a paper due at midnight, and she went back to her old silent-treatment and ignored me when she left. I shrugged it off and used some of the time to wrap a very special Christmas present for her that I designed and ordered a few months ago.

I don't use Twitter, I use Facebook, but when I told my boyfriend how crazy she was acting, he happened to check her public Twitter out yesterday. We realized that my roommate has been keeping a running commentary about me for about the last week. She posted two Tweets after I told her I was busy about my work ethic, accusing me of sitting around all day and staying up all night, and that I can't complain to her how busy I am, followed by "stfu."

I was floored since it's true, I go to bed about two hours after my roommate on a regular basis, but I also wake up AT LEAST two hours earlier because I'm so busy. I also feel like she shouldn't comment on my work ethic when she has been skipping one of her lecture classes completely for about a month and a half now. She sleeps until about noon every day and rarely goes to class. There is some question as to whether she'll be able to come back next semester, because she owes the school a lot of money (she lost one of her scholarships last semester for failing an introductory level class). It seems like she has given up on her schoolwork. It just makes me angry that she would put that out there for everyone to see when she's the one who doesnt' even go to class!

She's really lazy and destructive, too. She baked cookies on two of my cookie sheets a few days ago and somehow managed to bend both of the sheets so that whenever I try to bake on them now, everything slides off to one side. I discovered this last night while trying to bake cookies for my boss and ended up having to throw all my dough out because the sheets are worthless now. She sheds more than anyone I've ever met, and leaves hair all over the place. Whenever she shaves, she leaves her hair stubble all over the bathtub for me to clean up, and she will let the trash pile up for days when I'm gone on the weekend rather than take it out.

How do I deal with this roommate? When I know she's gone behind my back and talked about me on a social networking site (I mean, are we in high school?) I'm not sure that I want to live with her again next fall or even next semester. Should I confront her about Twitter?

[Jack]

I will put in my two cents, even though I'm terrible at following this advice. I would confront her about it, and try to explain it all and ask her what is making her so upset. Try to get both sides of the story out in the open and go from there. There is always a possibility that she has some issues that she hasn't brought up, you mentioned the lack of interest in school, a lot of people become very depressed in school when the workload gets high and if they are not doing as well as they had hoped. Another thing to keep in mind is that I've noticed that roommates generally go through a period of not being able to stand each other, regardless of how much they get along normally. Usually this will naturally pass, but I've often seen if end up with both parties just ignoring each other, so I would try to bring it up. I don't know enough about this girl to know how she would react if you brought up the social media thing, she would have no reason to, but it could be possible she would think you are spying on her and get more upset. If you talk about it and you find her arguments unreasonable, which I get the impression may be the case I would recommend trying to move to a new room, especially if there is someone else you know who has a similar work ethic and such as yourself. Again, this is my impression of the situation but I'm not good at doing this, I have a pretty awful roommate right now and I'm trying to figure out how to deal with it. Good luck, I hope you can sort it out!