An investigation into my roommate and best friend’s double life
Meet Ally, or AllyBear, my really, long time, best friend! She also just happens to be my freshman-year roommate and my current, senior-year, roommate.
Ally loves to love. She loves everyone really hard and sometimes gets hurt because of it. She is a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority where she has taken on leadership positions such as painting banners for her sorority events. She frequently cooks and likes to meal prep for the week to save money.
Ally is studying at the University of Texas at Austin to be an art education teacher and is currently student teaching every Friday at Deer Creek Elementary school and works with kids from Kindergarten to 5th grade.
Before coming into this project, I had thought I had already known everything about my Allybear — we lived in a little dorm together our freshmen year and due to COVID-19 and having no in-person classes, we were together at all times, 24/7. However, throughout this project, I had come to realize there were little things I never knew about Ally as we had taken 2 years apart as roommates and there was a lot more growth and change during that time.
Investigation
Ally and I decided to conduct our research at 7am in the morning before her student teaching. Immediately walking into her room I noticed the arrangement of clothing on the floor and her cluttered desk.
I followed Ally throughout her fast-paced routine of getting ready for her student teaching — from washing her face and brushing her teeth, picking out clothes, making breakfast, putting on her shoes, and running out the door.
Her routine was heavily based on how she could get ready physically in the most efficient way but also prepare herself mentally to be 100% available to see her kids. She was out the door in the next 30 minutes.
While watching her get ready, I could see small instances of her ripping off her “college” self and getting ready for her “teacher” self — tossing her comfy clothes, leaving the vape on the table, and putting on professional clothing. Although I had originally begun my research on her morning routine before her student teaching, the research interestingly enough shifted into the duality of her living space and how it sustains — or does not sustain — her as a teacher and a student in college.
Prolonged investigation
I decided to prolong my research by studying a weekend in Ally’s life full of college activities. This specific weekend she was going to the ACL festival. I talked to Ally here and there about how she deals with switching lives from being a teacher to a student in college and she says she “doesn’t.” Her room is always messy which reflects how the 6 days of the week look like for her — balancing her classes, her boyfriend, her social life, and her sorority life has always painfully shown in the status of her room.
Insight #1: You can see glimpses of people’s daily lives in their safe spaces
When prompting her on what her desk serves to her, she said that her desk served as a placeholder, or nightstand, of all the things that she used during the day — not for studying. In the picture you can see all the things she used during that day before arriving at the festival:
- Nasal spray & Zyrtec (as her allergies got bad during the first day of ACL)
- Scissors and cut tags from the new festival clothes she bought and wore
- Ribbon for her boots and hair that she tied for the festival
- Sunscreen
- Various jewelry she was trying on before the festival and jewelry she had taken off after
- The laptop she used to search up the bus routes to Zilker park
When I asked her more about her desk, she was confused and didn’t know what more to say. “I just put my stuff there and I know it will still be there when I come back. If I leave things out, my floor gets extremely messy and I can’t function.” Although Ally just told me something that felt insignificant to my research, she had actually gave me a lot more insight into the way she uses her space to fit her needs as a busy college student.
When I asked her where she studies, she told me that she doesn't study on her desk as it’s usually cluttered with all of her belongings. I had seen her work on the floor or in our living room whenever she would be working on her studio projects or her lesson plans for her student teaching but I had never thought hard on why she did this. I just simply thought it was due to the fact her desk was just not big enough for her projects. Although that may be true, I realized that it had a lot to do with the fact for her to feel like she is in control of the messiness of her room — and her life — she had to make sure that her safe space, her desk, was exactly how she needed it to be. All her belongings needed to a quick spot to where she could get to without thinking and that spot was her desk.
Insight #2: People’s rooms sometimes can tether you down to a different or past phase of your life
During an interview with Ally, I asked her if there were any indications of change she has seen in her life as a teacher while also being a college student. She would tell me about how there were certain responsibilities that she needed to uphold during the week to prepare herself for student teaching. This has often altered the activities she would usually partake in as a college student— such as thirsty Thursdays and going to bars on Friday nights as she is usually tired after student teaching.
I asked if there were any glimpses of her new “teacher life” (once a week new life) that is reflected in her living space and she mentioned that there was not much difference in her space but there are more instances where she feels that she needs to get out of her college space and work someplace else where she feels “adult.” She mentioned that the living room felt a little more “adult” to her as this was her own apartment where she cooks and cleans like an adult whereas her bedroom feels similar to her old room back home as most of her decor is taken from her home in Dallas and from her freshman year dorm.
Insight #3: Sometimes people leave their safe space to fit their agenda
What I found from Ally’s usage of her space is that her way of feeling in control is sometimes leaving a safe space. Despite her exhaustion from a demanding day at ACL, Ally found herself compelled to leave her room to work on her lesson plans and school assignments in the living room. When I asked her if I could take a picture of her studying on the couch, she recoiled and said that this was embarrassing since “normal” and “put together” people study at a desk. This was interesting to me that her way of feeling in control was leaving her room because it was too “college” for her but in her mind the act of sitting on the couch bundled up in a blanket felt childlike.
Conclusion & Findings
Whether Ally was aware of her actions or not, she instinctively curated her living space to align with her preferences and dual lifestyle. Her choices, whether conscious or subconscious, reflect a deliberate effort to tailor her environment to enhance her mental well-being and accommodate her unique double life.
Engaging in this project provided me with valuable insights into Ally’s life and thought processes. I found it interesting how someone’s living space can be perceived in various ways and can serve distinct purposes in different aspects of their life.
Initially, I assumed researching Ally would be challenging, given that we have been friends for so long and shared living space. However, going into this project has pleasantly surprised me and offered a deeper understanding of her mindset and the way she fits her space for her needs.
