Column:

Perks to living with three drama-free kings

By Christina Stiehl

Published Sept. 22, 2009

My initial reaction to living with three boys for the school year: smelly, dirty and impossible. Fortunately, I've since been proven quite wrong.

I grew up in a fairly conservative, very right-wing house in southern Illinois. So when I decided to room with guys for my senior year, I wasn't sure how my parents would react — and I wasn't prepared to reside with the homeless men outside of The Blue Fugue. To my surprise, they were actually supportive, and after only a few weeks, I can understand why.

For the first three years of college, I had a fairly traditional female living experience. Freshman year, I lived in Schurz residence hall (pre-renovation) for a semester. From there, I moved into my sorority house where I lived for three consecutive semesters and for my junior year I moved into an off-campus house with five of my girlfriends.

All those living arrangements had their positives and negatives, but they all contained the same, coinciding elements — a lot of women and a lot of drama.

Now, living with three guys (and two other girls), I have already gained more useful knowledge in these past few weeks than I have my first three years of school. For the sake of keeping this PG, I will spare you the fine details about all the life lessons I've learned so far, but I will say that having male roommates is definitely a unique experience.

Living with men has served me with a heavy dose of reality. For the sake of sparing others' feelings, girls tend to make excuses for one another and reinforce self-destructive behaviors.

Women also have a natural way of avoiding honesty in favor of either sugarcoating constructive criticism or ignoring the situation all together. Because neither of these options lead to effective problem solving, issues among women tend to snowball out of control into a destructive mess. In terms of living arrangements, this means an awkward and uncomfortable environment, to say the least.

Guys, on the other hand, have no problem with calling people out when they are acting ridiculous. And now that we're cohabitating almost like a family, my roommates have no qualms about hurting my feelings if it means letting me know when I'm out of line. Sure, it might sting at first, but I would much rather deal with a problem as it's occurring than continue unaware as my roommates secretly plot to suffocate me in my sleep.

In terms of having a constant male perspective on relationships and female behavior, let me just say it's much more useful and practical than the "He's Just Not That Into You" franchise.

Although I knew I would appreciate living with men as a change for reasons, such as having a beer pong table and an on-call handy man, I never realized how much more pleasant of an environment it would turn out to be. Sure, hearing Super Smash Brothers played at 30 decibels becomes pretty annoying, but our open communication is a refreshing change from the obnoxious drama and gossip that inevitably ensues when large groups of women live together.