Before signing your lease, make sure to read the fine print on the people you may be living with

Aside from obtaining a higher education through post-secondary institutions, university can be considered to be a time when students gain their independence - especially if they were to move out of their childhood home.

The adult responsibilities of grocery shopping and doing your own laundry finally begin, and we aren't able to rely on our parents anymore. Moving away from home also creates opportunities for character-building as students may need to live with a variety of individuals who may be unfamiliar to them.

With many student leases coming to an end and house-hunting season in full swing, it's no surprise that many of us may be reflecting on our prior housemate experience.

Whether it's your first time house-hunting as a student or your last, it's important to know that the people you will be sharing a home with have the power to make you feel part of a second family, or despise every moment of your academic year.

Don't get me wrong, not all housemates make there are always positive moments with housemates that can overshadow the annoyance you experience. Yes, you may fight about them always stealing your food, even when you write your name on the container. However, at the end of the day, when they need advice, you're always more than happy to talk with them about whatever troubles you.

I would say these are the best kinds of housemates. Although you may have to remind each other to take your laundry out of the dryer machine because it's been sitting there for a few days, they are motivational and comforting. These types of housemates make you miss home a little less.

On the other hand, we have the housemates that make you regret moving to a post-secondary institution so far from home.

Although no one intends to be an unfavourable housemate, we don't always get along with everyone we meet.

At such a diverse university, it's no surprise that our housemates were raised differently from us.

However, this often leads to conflict within the house. Someone may have to pick up the slack or provide constant reminders for everyone to pull their weight within their house. There may be an unfair division of household chores or overall your personalities don't match causing other lifestyle conflicts.

It's not favourable to live with people who you cannot agree with on simple things such as buying house supplies or are inconsiderate of your preferences like being excessively loud or passive-aggressive in the house group chat.

Elements such as these can break your university experience because you become miserable within a space where you are spending the majority of your time. The energy should be welcoming. You shouldn't be mentally exhausted anytime you think of heading back to your room. By experiencing these negative feelings, we begin to associate school with the unpleasant situations we constantly experience with our housemates.

Overall, we either get really lucky when gambling for housemates or we get placed into situations that make us regret moving out of our childhood homes.

Although I don't think there's a way we can avoid this completely, there are some preventative measures we can take to avoid this even before the lease is signed.

For example, creating a group of people to rent an entire house with you rather than looking to rent a room for yourself alone ensures that you personally know your future housemates. This can help avoid conflict as you may have better insight into their personality, lifestyle and their living preferences. If this doesn't work for you, you could also look for parts of houses to rent like the basement where you would only need to convince one other friend to move in with you.

It is very important to know who you are living with before you sign the lease.

In the event that you are living with random people, set house rules that accommodate everyone's lifestyle in some capacity and remember to hold mutual respect. At the end of the day, you are tied together by a lease. If this still doesn't work, find some trusted friends to laugh about these issues with and think about seeking other alternative living solutions next year.

Photos from Silhouette Photo Archives

By: Adriana Skaljin

Cassandra Rufenach is a fourth-year biology student and wrestler for the McMaster wrestling team. Rufenach started wrestling in the 11th grade for half a season, and played a full season in her final year of high school.

Her decision to start wrestling was inspired by her love for taekwondo, which led to a desire to do something that shared the same level of physical contact. She loved her experience on the high school wrestling team, and continued her career at McMaster for the past four years.

“There was a big transition going from high school to university-level wrestling,” explained Rufenach. “At McMaster, we started to learn the sport [beyond] having fun, so I had to relearn everything I knew.”

“I started [late into high school] because I didn’t know that women were allowed to be on the wrestling team,” said Rufenach on her experience going into a male-dominated sport.  “I remember being told that it was a boy’s sport, but I joined anyways because I was already [participating in] fighting sports.”

Rufenach accounts for the physicality of wrestling as the reason why it is male-dominated. This is reflected in McMaster’s roster size, with the men’s team approximately double the size of the women’s.

“The sport [requires a high level of] physicality and is a tough and aggressive sport,” explained Rufenach. “Whenever I tell anyone that I am on the wrestling team, they are surprised because of my size and the fact that I don’t fit the [wrestling stereotype].”

“I think this is because the women’s team isn’t well known,” added Rufenach. “I think we need to make women’s wrestling more well known.”

This disparity is not just limited to wrestling, despite the fact that many women show interest in athletics. Rufenach notes that there is still more progress that needs to be made .

“We need to bring [more] awareness to women in sports and show that girls are just as capable as guys,” said Rufenach. “We need to make [female athletics] more apparent [in society] and provide equal highlights for both sexes.”

Despite her acknowledgement that wrestling is a male-dominated sport, she commends her team on being inclusive and equal between the male and female wrestlers.

“The male wrestlers on the [McMaster] team are good at being welcoming to us females and there is no exclusion,” said Rufenach. “There are physical differences between the women and the men, and the guys take that into account and wrestle us more tactically [in practice].”

“Everyone has their own individual areas of improvement,” said Rufenach on the team’s dynamic. “As a whole, our closeness helps [to unify us by the fact] that it is our sport.”

When asked about her individual areas of improvement, Rufenach explained how last year she was able to crack the standings unlike the year prior. She owes her new found success to her personal motivation tactics.

“I tell myself to stay calm [before a match] and remain focused,” said Rufenach. “Each match is a learning experience. It should not matter if you win or lose. You need to focus on wrestling your best and at a level that you will be proud of.”

Rufenach provided advice to any woman considering a start in wrestling.

“It’s going to be hard work; you need to be aware that hard work pays off,” she said. “Don’t be intimidated by the fact that it is considered a male-dominated sport. It doesn’t matter and it shouldn’t matter.”

It is evident that with passion, perseverance and acceptance, female wrestlers such as Cassandra Rufenach have the ability to participate in the sports they love. It is important to move past the male-normativity that is placed against sports, such as wrestling, and strive to recognize female athletics.

 

[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]

Statistically, I’m a great fighter.

In my 10-plus years of playing hockey, I’ve never lost a fight. When it came to going buckets and gloves, I won both times.

But despite my obvious physical dominance on the rink, I have to say I’d rather hockey cut the fighting.

Those interested or involved in the sport have no doubt been a part of this debate at some point or another, and even those who aren’t order cialis canada interested have probably read an article or two about concussions sustained by minor hockey players.

Though brain-damaging injuries are obviously serious, that aspect of the argument, for me, isn’t the strongest. What is more convincing are the considerations of how scrapping affects the game itself.

There have been many recent changes to gameplay, regulations, even things like dimension standards. The changes were primarily implemented to improve the speed and flow of the game, as well as hopefully the skillsets of players.

Changes like those made to dimension standards are easier to see the effects of than more subjective changes (for instance the severity of penalties). The newly-increased distance between the blue lines and the goal lines, making for a larger offensive/defensive zone, makes a difference in how often the puck leaves the zone. This way, there is less need for the offensive players to clear the zone, and fewer stoppages of play related with re-entry offsides.

Hockey is obviously taking pains to become the smooth, fast sport it should be, for as much of the game as possible. Given this aspiration, it seems silly to keep mucking around with scraps.

Instead of bench brawls, I’d rather see brawlers benched.

Fighting is an unnecessary disruption to gameplay that serves no purpose but to entertain spectators who mistook the hockey rink for a boxing ring. It distracts from and interrupts the parts of the game that matter. Shooting, passing, skating, making plays to score more goals because that’s how you win a game; not by throwing a few punches or pulling another person’s jersey over their head.

Additionally, fighting in hockey creates an unwarranted culture of violence within the sport and its spectators. There is no other game wherein players regularly fight outside the parameters of the sport. Football, notoriously rough, has huge amounts of physicality. Yet, it is not unusual to see a player helping an opponent up after a particularly nasty tackle. And the fans don’t seem to mind, given that the National Football League is the most profitable sports organization in North America.

Speaking as a puck-head, I know that the National Hockey League wouldn’t lose me as a fan, and I wager most of my ice-fiend friends wouldn’t stop watching either. There is significantly less fighting in hockey than there used to be, and the referees are making marked attempts to stop brawls before they break out. It’s just a matter of improving this trend until we cut fighting out entirely.

 

 

        @samwisegodfrey

Subscribe to our Mailing List

© 2024 The Silhouette. All Rights Reserved. McMaster University's Student Newspaper.
magnifiercrossmenu