It’s that time of the year again. Just when we finally forgot the holiday madness it seems another source of stress is lurking around the corner ready to cause us to pull our hair out and make us wish for exam week instead. If by now you haven’t started looking for a place to live for next year, good luck.

Finding an apartment or even a cardboard box that hasn’t been rented seems to become more difficult with each day that passes. Not only is finding a place to live filled with annoyance, figuring out who to live with is something that drives people to play Cher on repeat and weep silently into their pillow. But unless you liked dodging Resident Advisor’s while sneaking beer into your dorm room, you’ll have to get over it and figure out who to live with.

When choosing a group of people to share a home with, it’s important to realize the way you see someone in public and in social settings is completely different from how they’d be if you were to live with them. The most well-groomed person you know could live in a festering pig sty or sit around the house in tighty-whities looking more trailer trash than Anna Nicole Smith. But because you signed a lease with them, you’ll be wishing you’d never heard of Michael Jordan or Hanes.

Inevitably, just when you think everybody is ready to start the house hunt, someone backs out at the last second, claiming their dog died or they found a pot of gold and are using it to propel their career as a Hollywood stuntman. Whether you like it or not, the show must go on and you have to find a roommate no matter the cost, even if it means asking the one person who doesn’t have a place to live, the one person no one else wants to live with – the annoying friend. The friend that’s a great person but kind of like a tanning bed – good only in small doses.

So that’s the Fellowship of the Apartment: Trailer Trash, Annoying Guy and yourself. All you need now is a place to live and you need to find it stat or communal showers and foot fungus awaits your future in the dorm.

Being an optimist, you find a place where everyone agrees on the price, the location, who gets the biggest room and who gets the parking pass. Everything is moving like clockwork, and you think this is great, but little do you know the real fun has just started.

I’m reminded of Dr. Seuss’s famous character the Grinch when I think of living in what basically amounts to a slumlord’s apartment. He’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch, and upon moving in you’ll find out why. If battling mice that for some reason have been genetically enhanced with super speed and intelligence is on your schedule for autumn quarter, then you’ll get an “A.”

This may fit in with Trailer Trash, but for others, the idea of a mouse eating all the Easy Mac then flippin’ the bird as it leaves feces everywhere isn’t the most appetizing thought. What’s to be done? You call the slumlord – the one that just made you hand over your soul for rent – and complain.

But does this accomplish anything? No. The slumlord thinks, “He’s a college student, what could he possibly do? Find some place else to live?” So instead of getting rid of the mice he hikes the rent up and tells you the mice will die-off in the cold because – guess what, kiddies – the heating only works half the time – mice-sicles for all.

In short, if you managed to weather the year without having to get a tetanus shot from walking through the complex’s common area, consider yourself blessed. In fact consider yourself so blessed that after the slumlord takes your deposit money then punches you in the kidneys, you’ll be able to start the process over again and find out that almost everywhere you move is either falling apart or desperately guarded by people who sacrificed a small lamb to heathen gods just so they could renew their lease.

David Cross is a junior in journalism. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].