The second most scary thing about colleges, after opening the admissions letter, is going to college. Leaving the comfort of your messy room, not being able to have your parents cook all your food, and actually behaving at your age level can be quite stressful. Thus, getting the right roommate is key to surviving college. To get the optimal college roommate, it is important that they meet most of the following requirements.

Notices the little things: This … interesting talent is needed to find and destroy all the micro-recording equipment placed by the NSA and any overbearing parents. One way to determine if your potential roommate is good at catching this is if they are an avid lizard collector. Their skills in spotting and catching tiny fast things will be useful here.

Messy handwriting: In college, messy handwriting is popular amongst only one group of students: pre-med. Hanging out with a roommate who has the world’s worst handwriting will help you convince your parents that your “best friend” is someone destined to be a doctor. This will make them feel less disappointed in you and your “interactions between crickets in the African Subcontinent” degree. If they do end up comparing you, your friend may be able to read the prescriptions your doctor wrote for your anti-depressants!

Pillows, anti-Netflix, and messy: There are a few other nice things to have in a roommate like good pillow making skills since you’ll be sleeping the whole time. They should also be anti-Netflix because, at this point, Netflix is only crime and cake shows. They should be messier than you so that you look better than them by comparison and don’t feel bad every day (your grades will do that for you). You can also deceive your parents when they come over and blame any mess you may have caused on your friend.

Cereal First: This quality must never be overlooked. They must pour their milk after pouring their cereal. The last thing you want is to spend a year living with a complete animal.

Unknown Subreddits: The last step is to get the word out, and to do this, one should post on the most obscure subreddits. One such example is r/birdswitharms, a forum where people photoshop arms onto birds. People who post on these fire subreddits are the ones who know what’s up.

Reliability: No matter how much you are stressing, they should be there for you. Telling your parents that you are studying when in reality you are bingeing The Office, yelling at the TA and intimidating them into giving you an A, intentionally flunking a test so you don’t die because of the curve; this is what you want in a roomie.