新视野大学英语 读写教程第四册 unit5-b

　　Roommate Conflicts
Identical twins Katie and Sarah Monahan arrived at Pennsylvania's Gettysburg College last year determined¹ to strike out on independent paths. Although the 18-year-old sisters had requested rooms in different dorms, the housing office placed them on the eighth floor of the same building, across the hall from each other. While Katie got along with her roommate, Sarah was miserable². She and her roommate silently warred over matters ranging from when the lights should be turned off to how the furniture should be arranged. Finally, they divided the room in two and gave up on oral communication, communicating primarily through short notes.
During this time, Sarah kept running across the hall to seek comfort from Katie. Before long, the two wanted to live together again. Sarah's roommate eventually agreed to move out. “From the first night we lived together again, we felt so comfortable,” says Sarah. “We felt like we were back home.”
Sarah's ability to solve her dilemma³ by rooming with her identical twin is unusual, but the conflict she faced is not. Despite extensive efforts by many schools to make good roommate matches, unsatisfactory outcomes are common. One roommate is always cold, while the other never wants to turn up the furnace, even though the thermometer says it's minus five outside. One person likes quiet, while the other person spends two hours a day practicing the trumpet⁴, or turns up his sound system to the point where the whole room vibrates. One eats only organically produced vegetables and believes all living things are holy, even ants and mosquitoes, while the other likes wearing fur and enjoys cutting up frogs in biology class.
When personalities⁵ don't mix, the excitement of being away at college can quickly grow stale. Moreover, roommates can affect each other's psychological health. A recent study reports that depression in college roommates is often passed from one person to another.
Learning to tolerate a stranger's habits may teach undergraduates flexibility⁶ and the art of compromise, but the learning process is often painful. Julie Noel, a 21-year-old senior, recalls that she and her freshman⁷ year roommate didn't communicate and were uncomfortable throughout the year. “I kept playing the same disk in my CD player for a whole day once just to test her because she was so timid,” says Noel. “It took her until dinner time to finally change it.” Although they didn't saw the room in half, near year's end, the two did end up in a screaming fight. “Looking back, I wish I had talked to her more about how I was feeling,” says Noel.
Most roommate conflicts spring from such small, irritating differences rather than from grand disputes over abstract philosophical⁸ principles. “It's the specifics that tear roommates apart,” says the assistant director of residential⁹ programs at a university in Ohio.
In extreme cases, roommate conflict can lead to serious violence, as it did at Harvard last spring: One student killed her roommate before committing suicide. Many schools have started conflict resolution programs to calm tensions that otherwise can build up like a volcano preparing to explode, ultimately resulting in physical violence. Some colleges have resorted to “roommate contracts” that all new students fill out and sign after attending a seminar on roommate relations. Students detail behavioral guidelines for their room, including acceptable hours for study and sleep, a policy for use of each other's possessions and how messages will be handled. Although the contracts are not binding¹⁰ and will never go to a jury, copies are given to the floor's residential adviser¹¹ in case conflicts later arise. “The contract gives us permission to talk about issues which students forget or are afraid to talk about,” says the director of residential programs.
Some schools try to head off feuding¹² before it begins by using computerized matching, a process that nevertheless remains¹³ more of a guessing game than a science. Students are put together on the basis of their responses to housing form questions about smoking tolerance¹⁴, preferred hours of study and sleep, and self-described tendencies toward tidiness or disorder¹⁵. Parents sometimes weaken the process by taking the forms and filling in false and wishful data about their children's habits, especially on the smoking question. The matching process is also complicated by a philosophical debate among housing managers concerning the flavor of university life: “Do you put together people who are similar — or different, so they can learn about each other?” A cartoon sums up the way many students feel the process works: Surrounded by a mass of papers, a housing worker picks up two selection forms and exclaims, “Likes chess, likes football; they're perfect together!”
Alan Sussman, a second-year student, says, “I think they must have known each of our personalities and picked the opposite,” he recalls. While Sussman was neat and serious about studying, his roommate was messy and liked to party into the early hours of the morning. “I would come into the room and find him pawing through my desk, looking for postage for a letter. Another time, I arrived to find him chewing the last of a batch¹⁶ of chocolate chip cookies my mother had sent me. People in the hall were putting up bets as to when we were going to start slapping each other around,” he says. Against all odds¹⁷, the two ended up being friends. Says Sussman: “We taught each other a lot — but I would never do it again.”
Words: 904
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1 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

2 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

3 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。

4 trumpet   

n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘

参考例句：

• He plays the violin, but I play the trumpet.他拉提琴，我吹喇叭。
• The trumpet sounded for battle.战斗的号角吹响了。

5 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

6 flexibility   

n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性

参考例句：

• Her great strength lies in her flexibility.她的优势在于她灵活变通。
• The flexibility of a man's muscles will lessen as he becomes old.人老了肌肉的柔韧性将降低。

7 freshman   

n.大学一年级学生(可兼指男女)

参考例句：

• Jack decided to live in during his freshman year at college.杰克决定大一时住校。
• He is a freshman in the show business.他在演艺界是一名新手。

8 philosophical   

adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的

参考例句：

• The teacher couldn't answer the philosophical problem.老师不能解答这个哲学问题。
• She is very philosophical about her bad luck.她对自己的不幸看得很开。

9 residential   

adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的

参考例句：

• The mayor inspected the residential section of the city.市长视察了该市的住宅区。
• The residential blocks were integrated with the rest of the college.住宿区与学院其他部分结合在了一起。

10 binding   

有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的

参考例句：

• The contract was not signed and has no binding force. 合同没有签署因而没有约束力。
• Both sides have agreed that the arbitration will be binding. 双方都赞同仲裁具有约束力。

11 adviser   

n.劝告者，顾问

参考例句：

• They employed me as an adviser.他们聘请我当顾问。
• Our department has engaged a foreign teacher as phonetic adviser.我们系已经聘请了一位外籍老师作为语音顾问。

12 feuding   

vi.长期不和（feud的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• Riccardo and Cafiero had been feuding so openly that the whole town knew about it. 里卡多和卡菲埃罗一直公开地闹别扭，全城的人都知道此事。 来自辞典例句
• The two families have been feuding with each other for many generations. 这两个家族有好多代的世仇了。 来自互联网

13 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

14 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

15 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

16 batch   

n.一批(组，群)；一批生产量

参考例句：

• The first batch of cakes was burnt.第一炉蛋糕烤焦了。
• I have a batch of letters to answer.我有一批信要回复。

17 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？