At 1AM, Right when I was about to go to sleep, my roommate R started blasting poppin’ DJ music next door. Of course, I was annoyed since a) it hurt my head, b) I cannot sleep with noise, and c) I need to wake up at 7 tomorrow. So I shot her a text “Can you turn down the volume? It’s really late now.” Yet, after 5-10 minutes, she still hadn’t responded, so I had to knock on her door. I said exactly what I texted.
She responded: “OK, why do you have to say it like that?”
“Say like what?” I asked.
“With so much attitude.” She said.
I just lightly responded that I was saying it normally and walked away.
I came back to my room and felt like I was swallowing a rock. It was extremely uncomfortable and disturbing to not only be dismissed because I spoke up about her behavior which bothered my sleep, but also to be accused of “having an attitude.” With no surprise, she continued to play a few more songs, still super loud. Not until the music stopped completely was I finally able to sleep in peace.
The next morning, I woke up with a headache. I grumpily texted KF about last night. KF, as always, gave me a solution – asking a hypothetical question. For example, in this situation, it would be: “If someone next door is blasting music but you needed to sleep to wake up for work early in the morning, how would you feel?” When I was in high school, my teachers taught me that questions that appear in the end linger in people’s minds and prompt them to contemplate, as they have open-ended effects. So I guess that was why KF suggested doing that in the future. I have no doubt that this will work like a charm, but I actually just hope that I won’t have to deal with difficult roommate situations like this again! So awkward!
Trang "Tee" Nguyen 