Roommate stays up all night–what to do?
So, it is too late to switch rooms at this time and I am living in a dorm with someone whose sleep schedule is the absolute opposite of mine. Basically, the kid himiself is not a bad person; he seems very calm, low key, and reserved. He stays up until 8 or so in the morning typing away instant message and the typical useless stuff. He is certainly not doing homework or anything constructive, which bemuses me. The main issue is that he will sometimes do laundry at 3 am, eat greasy meals in the room at 2 am, and bang drawers/ make ordinary noises like opening a door. These thing wouldn’t normally bother me as I always sleep with earplugs, but he woke me up– and that is beginning to be a daily nuisance. I have class at 8 am and work out five days a week, so it is very important that I get reste. What should I do? What is the best way to deal with this? I am very tolerant but he i think he is being inconsiderate. Yet, he is not outright disrespectful…
Thanks Liz, very insightful recommendation. And yes, I was beginning to become resentful towards him and expressing my anger through other channels like slamming the door, etc.
I am pretty sure he might not know he is bothering me and is just bored of surfing the web. I was somewhat hesitant of talking to him because he is rarely in the room and I do not want to seem authoritative or unfair, but it is also not my fault that he has an abnormal “sleep” schedule.
Tagged with: nightwhat • roommate • stays
Filed under: Kids Ear Muffs
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just tell him, “dude, mind keeping it down, got classes and stuff in the morning and i gotta sleep”
Just ask him to please keep the noise to a minimum when you are sleeping since you have to get up early in the morning. Given it is the middle of the night when he is doing these things it is not an unreasonable request.
I had a similar problem with a roommate my junior year of college– her boyfriend was half a world away, so she changed her schedule to accommodate the time difference. She slept all day and stayed up all night. It was awful. I would recommend that you be upfront with him. Frame your request not in terms of what he’s doing to you, but what you as an average person require to function. He may think that his behavior is completely normal and you’re interfering with his right to make his own life decisions, but he needs to understand that his decisions are so negatively impacting your own life that it’s really straining the roommate relationship.
I can tell from your commentary that you’re developing a sense of annoyance, but you didn’t say that you had addressed the problem before. From someone who knows, please take my advice: instead of harboring resentment and perhaps even becoming passive aggressive (waking him up in the middle of the day, for example) please confront the situation as soon as you can. Let me tell you, it only gets worse.
He might not realize that he’s waking you up. If he does and this continues to be a problem, he’s just rude and you need to speak with your RA or another authority about it.
Good luck!
Find a new roommate who has a similar lifestyle to yours.