You love them. You hate them. At times, you want to strangle them.

Freshmen, meet your roommates.

"It's quite a hard adjustment," Ryan Martin (freshman-advertising-public relations) said. "I never knew how hard it would be to have a roommate until I tried to watch TV really late at night. He likes to go to bed early and the light bothers him."

Sometimes the roommate experience can result in angst for students who clash with the person sleeping three feet away from them.

"There's probably less than 5 percent of students who need to be reassigned," Kathy Krinks, assistant director of housing, said. "Most of the time, people just want to be reassigned because they have met someone else that they want to room with."

Assigned based on semester standing, major and age, roommates are often a new challenge for many first-year students.

Krinks said careful consideration is taken to attempt to find a compatible match.

"If freshmen are coming from the same high school, we do not assign them together if they do not ask for each other," Krinks said. "Also, we try to keep those over the age of 21 not in rooms with people under 21."

Despite the Office of Housing's efforts, some students opt to change housing arrangements by visiting www.hfs.psu.edu/eliving and clicking on the "Room Switch Board" to find a better dorm pal.

"There is a form that you need to complete," Krinks said. "If it's a switch we can make, then we need to hear from both students."

Switching rooms without going through the proper procedure is highly discouraged.

"That is for safety reasons. God forbid there be a fire. We need to account for everyone," Krinks said. "They'll be put before a judicial system if they switch keys and don't do it through the official method."

The housing office usually receives about 100 roommate switch requests per fall semester.

However, awkward situations are bound to arise, regardless of the level of roommate love.

"A friend came up from FTCAP and wanted to see my room, so I took him and his parents up. When we got there, my roommate had just gotten out of the shower," Michael Watson (freshman-aerospace engineering) said. "He had a towel on. I mean, it was kinda on."

Over the summer session, some freshmen picked up a few tricks of the trade to help avoid embarrassment.

"Put your underwear on in the shower before you get into the room. Personally, I don't do that. I like to freely roam the halls naked," Alex Mack (freshman-finance) said. "But it's good advice. Do it to avoid any awkward situations."

Absentee roommates are sometimes a factor in first-year living situations.

"My roommate is not here. She's never here. She goes home every single weekend," Heather Day (freshman-chemistry) said. "We are nice to each other, but we're not the same person. I'm kind of glad that I'll eventually be getting a new one."

Some urban legends tell cautionary tales of roommates who have let their rage get the best of them.

"Our resident assistant told us that some guy killed his roommate because he was sick of him. He hung him in the closet," Tyler Boehmer (freshman-computer engineering) said. "The cleaning ladies found him three days later."

To avoid such complications, Krinks strongly urges all freshmen to communicate at the first sign of trouble.

"The biggest thing is learning to negotiate," she said. "If you work together, you can make life much easier."