Here’s the thing no one tells you when you’re frantically signing a lease and pretending you understand utilities: the people you come home to will matter infinitely more than the place you’re paying for.
For a lot of us, roommates are a gamble. You either coexist — polite, distant, living separate lives under the same roof — or, if you’re really lucky, you end up with people who become recurring characters in your life.
I found my apartment the way all great student housing decisions are made — last-minute, slightly desperate and on a Penn State Facebook housing forum. It was a sublease with three seniors who already knew each other, already had a rhythm, already had history. Then there was me — a little shit of a sophomore with no idea what I was walking into.
I was fully prepared to be a side character. Instead, I walked in on my first day to big hugs and the smell of a home-cooked meal.
No adjustment period. No awkward “So … what’s your major?” energy. Just immediate warmth and about 10 questions fired at me within the first five minutes. Somehow, that same night, I ended up on the balcony, laughing like I had been there all along.
The Balcony
That balcony — God, that balcony.
Objectively? Nothing special. Slightly weathered, not particularly spacious, definitely not luxury — but it became the place. The kind of place where you would sit down for five minutes and accidentally stay for three hours. Where guests get lovingly interrogated. Where inside jokes are born at an alarming rate.
It held everything. Late summer nights with music playing and the air still warm. Rainy afternoons where we sat outside anyway, pretending to do homework but really just talking. Winter nights that made absolutely no sense — bundled in heated blankets, clutching mugs of tea, refusing to go inside like we had something to prove.
We didn’t, by the way. We were just attached to the feeling of being there together.
The Living Room
Our living room was chaos in all the best ways. Movie nights where the movie was more of a suggestion than an activity. Crafting sessions with our coffee table covered in our impressive stash of supplies. Entire episodes of whatever show we were obsessed with at the time, talked over from start to finish. Dancing just because we felt like it and we could. Coming home after long days and immediately collapsing onto the couch to debrief like it was a scheduled event — which it kind of was.
There’s something deeply comforting about knowing that no matter how your day went, you’re walking into a room where someone’s going to ask, “So … what happened?” and actually mean it.
The Kitchen
The kitchen had its own personality, too. Gabby was always cooking and the rest of us would just gather, like it was instinct. Sitting on the kitchen stools as a live audience, offering commentary we were not qualified to give — but that was part of it — the closeness, the ease of just existing around each other.
Food wasn’t just food. It was, “I made this and thought of you,” which is a wildly underrated love language. It was coming home after a long day and realizing someone had already considered you, already done something small and intentional just because they care.
That kind of love stays with you, because it’s never really about the meal itself — it’s about what it represents. Being known, being taken care of, being folded into someone else’s routine without having to ask. Over time, it stopped feeling like just roommates and started to feel like found family.
A Girl’s Room
Even our bedrooms, which technically should have been private, never really were. Doors were open more than they were closed. We’d stay up way too late, fully aware we’d regret it but unwilling to stop talking. Laughing until we were delirious, starting conversations we absolutely did not have time for — but committing anyway. When things weren’t light and funny, those same doors stayed open.
There were nights when being alone just wasn’t an option. No perfect advice or grand gestures — just sitting next to someone, on the floor or the edge of a bed, existing with them until things felt a little less overwhelming. That kind of support doesn’t get talked about enough, but it’s what makes a space feel safe.
The Grief Of Lost Proximity
That’s the real intimacy of shared spaces. Not just sharing a fridge or following a chore chart but sharing a life in all of its unpolished, unfiltered glory. Seeing people at their best, their worst and all the in-between — and choosing them anyway.
Then, because college loves a good emotional plot twist, everything shifted. Seniors graduate, leases end and people leave. It’s a strange kind of grief, the loss of proximity.
I’m still in the same apartment. Same walls, same balcony, same living room — just different people filling the space. I love them too — it’s just different. My journey in this space started off with a completely different dynamic.
That’s the part I didn’t expect. That a space can hold multiple versions of your life at once. That it carries who you were and the memories of its former inhabitants, while still making room for who you’re becoming.
College is temporary — everyone loves to remind you of that. But the way you live during it, the people you build a home with, the spaces that hold your most honest moments — those don’t feel temporary when you’re in them, so treasure them while you can.
What are your thoughts on the intimacy of shared spaces? Let us know on Instagram @VALLEYmag!
