Here, at Saint Joseph’s University, student athletes are not forced to live with other athletes. They have the choice living with people on their team, another team, or a non-athlete. Some students like this so they can room with their friends, but others hate it and find many conflicts throughout the school year.
Several perks come into play when rooming with an athlete on campus. First, the non-athlete is able to meet other student athletes around campus. This allows them to have more familiar faces when walking around Saint Joseph’s University. Going to games and supporting their roommate is always fun for both sides. Everyone needs their space at times, and when living with a student athlete they are almost never in the room. They travel a lot and have multiple practices a day. It is always nice to come back to a quiet room after a long day.
However, there are negatives when having student athletes as roommates. One is that they are mostly always messy because they are always on the go and tired. Constantly, there is something going on whether it be practice, schoolwork, or their social life.
Their workout clothes unfortunately smell up the room do to all the practices they have in a day and little time to do laundry. However, some teams have the luxury of getting practice clothes washed for them.
Athletes have lift and conditioning practice each and every day that can be from the early morning to later in the evening. The morning lift is very inconvenient to the roommate because it is before any student has class in the morning. Athletes say that it is hard getting ready in the dark and finding all of the gear they need for the day. The challenge they face is not waking up their roommate, but it happens once in a while. Unfortunately, not everyone can fall back to sleep easily and that is a problem for the non-student athlete.
Another thing that tends to be an issue is when the student athlete most likely always has to go to bed early and now that non-athlete faces the challenge of not waking or disturbing the roommate when they get ready for bed later. The roommate can have friends over as late as they want, and it could be hard to get quality sleep when everyone is loud. Their social life can be very different on the weekends because student athletes are constantly training early mornings on weekends. They are both living in the same dorm room but tend to live two different lives.
