The dos and don'ts of Facebook stalking your roommates

The inevitable uneasiness of this first meeting is made all the weirder by the facebook.com phenomenon. Sure, Facebook may have made the whole getting-to-know-your-roommates process a little easier, but it definitely made the in-person introductions a little creepy. There you are, introducing yourself to people who have, most likely, already Facebook stalked you thoroughly. You can only imagine them weeding through picture after picture, stopping at that kind of sketchy one that you probably should have untagged, analyzing your music and movie choices, and, let's not lie, judging you a little.

Let me give you an idea of how Facebook affected my first encounters with my roommates. It all started on July 15. There I was, sitting in front of my computer, facebooking aimlessly, when I decided to click on the "Princeton 2012" group. What did I find? Post after post of people exclaiming that they'd received their roommate assignments. Needless to say, I spent the next 24 hours refreshing my Princeton Webmail again and again, waiting in vain for that one, vital e-mail. Finally, after a grueling day of waiting, my refresh button came through for me: I got my roommate assignment. Immediately, my fingers flew to the keyboard, and Facebook loaded on my browser. Now my only hope was that my future roommates weren't clever enough to have made their profiles private.

Unfortunately, they were clever enough to get into Princeton and apparently also clever enough to prevent excessive Facebook stalking. "What do I do?" I thought. "Do I friend them?" No! I can't be that overeager kid who sends the friend request 60 seconds after receiving the housing assignment. (Well, ok, I am that kid, but I can't let my future roommates know that yet!) Of course, I never even imagined that my roommates, scattered across the country, might have been staring at their own computer screens thinking the exact same thing. No, I didn't consider this possibility. Instead, I spent yet another anxious 24 hours staring at my computer screen, hoping that my notifications would go from zero to one and that the friendly dialogue box proclaiming "You have a friend request" would pop up.

The day stretched on and on, but finally my waiting paid off: "You have a friend request." I accepted. The Facebook stalking began.

Really, after a month and a half of Facebook stalking and superficial Facebook messages - another struggle - introductions are hardly necessary. But what are you supposed to say? "Hi! You're Laura. I know that because I've spent the last few weeks creepily scrolling through your Facebook page. It's good to finally meet you!" Somehow, I don't think that would go over so well. So we go through yet another set of trivial introductions, this time in person, and hope that our new roommates haven't already found out a little too much from our Facebook profiles.