7. Our Roommates, Ourselves

Olga Khazan, a staff writer for The Atlantic, wrote about how roommates impact people. She begins by telling of personal experience of when she arrived at an American University as an international student, and how she was (temporarily) paired with a stranger. Her roommate, named Kelly, was from Pennsylvania and she spoke of something called “water ice” which was completely unknown to Khazan. She had read articles saying she would probably hate her roommate, but she ended up becoming very close friends with Kelly. She mentions, however, that this doesn’t happen to everyone, and goes on to give specific ways in which roommates affect each other. According to a 2012 study from the University of Michigan, anxious roommates make the other more anxious, however a happy roommate doesn’t make the other happier. In that study they also discovered that women with poor mental health act better when paired with someone who also has poor mental health. Daniel Eisenberg, a researcher from the University of Michigan, discovered that living with a roommate who drinks greatly influenced the other roommate, however the same does not happen with gambling, smoking, drug use, or sex. In 2001, Bruce Sacerdote, an economist, discovered that living with a person who drinks influences if a student will join a fraternity together or not; 27% of roommate pairs who drink join the same fraternity.  A recent study in the University of Michigan discovered that women who were paired with above average weight women gained less weight in their freshman year than those paired with skinny women. Researchers suspect this happens because overweight women exercise and diet more, and the thinner roommate picks up on these behaviors. A study in 2006 found that women with roommates who have dominant personalities end up acting more submissively after four months of school. Lastly, researchers asked five pairs of roommates to say “She has your dark suit in greasy wash water all year” and “Don’t ask me to carry an oily rag like that” four times during their first semesters. They found that after winter break all the pairs sounded more like each other.

Khazan wrote about a top that interest a wide range of ages, from teenagers in high school to people in college or even adults who left college and decided to read about it. For this reason, her diction is less sophisticated and easy to understand. She gives many examples about how roommates impact each other, and she also describes how they are impacted in different ways from what the average person would think. In the article, every time she speaks of an outside source she includes a link to it; allowing the reader to easily find them, in case he or she wanted to read more deeply about them. The author transmitted information, both of researches or her personal experiences, very successfully.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/our-roommates-ourselves/379322/