Zuckerberg Made It Happen

Although it was nearly a year ago, I remember the moment that I became a Penn Stater like it was yesterday. I was sitting in Physics class on a cold winter day when I received an unforgettable text from my dad: a picture of a white envelope with “WE ARE” written across it in big blue letters. My acceptance letter was here, so I was one step away from officially being a Penn State freshman! Once I got home, I opened it immediately and logged onto MyPennState to accept my offer. Upon acceptance, I started filling out details such as my meal plan, housing, and other important requirements, but I stopped when I reached the blank that asked for “roommate”. This was a big question mark for me at the time, but I knew it was extremely important to find a compatible roommate while living in the cramped dorms. I started thinking of friends from my school who I could room with, but every name I thought of seemed too easy. The part of Penn State that had me most excited was the vast student body, and I felt that rooming with one of my friends from high school would be holding myself back. With that mindset, I started to search online for my roommate. After spending hours looking through Instagram that night, I found a few people who I messaged but all of them had roommates already. Frustrated, I gave up for the night and went to bed.

The next morning, my dad brought up the idea of checking the Penn State Class of 2024 FaceBook page. He claimed that a lot of freshmen used that page to find roommates, so once I got home from school that day, I created an account and logged onto the app. I searched up the page and immediately it appeared with over 5000 members, most off whom were freshmen also looking for a roommate. Finally, I felt hopeful about finding myself the right roommate, so I started scrolling through the posts. After reading a few, I started to work on a post of my own, so I compiled all of my best pictures and began writing. Within minutes of posting, I had people liking, commenting, and instantly trying to get in touch with me. About an hour later, I found myself trying to juggle personal conversations with over 20 different people, all virtually strangers. Overwhelmed, I gave up for the night and put my phone away. The next morning, I woke up with even more people trying to get in touch with me, so I went straight to Facebook and deleted my post. If I wanted this to work, I knew I would have to go about it differently.

“Quality over quantity” became my new mindset, so I narrowed my new friends down to 5. I spent a few days Snapchatting them and learning about their interests, but I started to realize none of them would be the right fit for me. I was back to square one, so I went back on the Facebook page and started scrolling. My goal was to find one person with similar interests, and within a half hour, I came across a post that caught my attention. A post from a guy who was a science major like me, listened to the same music as me, and had the same goals at Penn State as I did. I sent him a message, and we hit it off instantly. As we talked more, we found more and more similarities that we shared. Even some that were incredibly unlikely, such as us both being Celtics and Steelers fans despite him living on the other side of the country in San Diego. Quickly, we became close friends as we talked on Snapchat, played Xbox together, and started introducing each other to our friends. Within a few days, we decided to room together, excited to know that within a few months we could finally meet each other in person.

When I walked into my dorm room on August 18th and met him for real, it was like we had been friends for life. Even though ever interaction till then had been virtual, hanging out in person felt no different. My roommate search was a success, and although it took effort from both of us, we both know that we owe it all to Zuckerberg.