Opportunism that a College Student Faces

            Last year I was faced with a new opportunity on housing at school. Freshman year I was required to live in a dorm and sophomore year I lived in a sorority house. As a junior, I had my first opportunity to choose housing for myself and who I wanted to live with. In the sorority, I had a small group of girls who I was close with and I thought I would always live with them junior year. The group researched apartments and then we all went over them together. Then we narrowed our list and decided on which apartment was our overall favorite. We all fell in love with the place I found, but the building could not accommodate all five of us. The build no longer had any 5 person units left and could only offer us a four-bedroom unit. The management company gave us the option for one bedroom to be shared by two people, but we decided this wasn’t realistic due to the size of the bedrooms. We then had to decide who would live together and consequently which person would be left out.

            Some members of the group were closer to others and I happened to not be as close with everyone as the rest of the group. However, I was the one that found the apartment so the group decided I “deserved” a spot and I was guaranteed a room in the apartment. Initially, I felt relieved because I loved the apartment and the people. After some thought, the idea of leaving one person out did not sit well with me. I have been excluded by former friends in the past and I know how it feels to be left out by your “friends”. I never want to exclude people and especially my friends. I knew I would feel unsettled if I chose to stay in the apartment.

            I proposed two ideas to the group, we find a new place that could house all five of us comfortably or I was willing to volunteer to be the person that did not live with the group. I fully believed that my sorority sisters would decide to find an apartment that would work for all of us so we could stay together. Unfortunately, I was very wrong. My friends were happy that I volunteered to take myself out of the equation and they ended up signing for the apartment.  

            After I decided to walk away, I needed to find a new apartment and roommates. I spoke with two other girls in the sorority that I always thought were nice, but never spent much time getting to know them because I was usually busy with the group. I found out that they were looking for a fourth person for the same apartment building. I was quickly introduced to their friend who would also be in the apartment. The plan came together smoothly and we ended up getting a unit in the apartment building I loved. When we signed for the apartment, three out of the four girls were in the same sorority. Today, none of us are in the sorority because we all chose to leave this past summer. After leaving the sorority, I am now able to realize how much happier I am without it.

            I have now been living with these girls and I know that I have a more genuine connection with these girls then I did with my former sorority sisters. I have not been close with those girls and we have all grown apart. At the time, I thought walking away from the apartment with the sorority girls was the right thing to do and I made that decision because I did not want anyone to be excluded. Today, I am so thankful I made that choice because I believe I would not have been as happy in that roommate situation.


I look at myself as a “good citizen” because I stuck to my values and did not exclude someone because it was convenient. I am unsure if this situation demeans me as a “good citizen” in the scope of a college student. I believe there are times in life when an individual might choose to be opportunist if they have a short amount of time to make the decision. I would argue that someone can walk away from opportunism if they have the time to recognize the situation for what it is. You need to look at the situation for what it is, identify the opportunist choice, and ask yourself is it worth it?

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanSeptember 21, 2017 at 2:57 PM

    Before we get to the economics of this, I wonder as a practical matter whether you considered at the outset getting two apartments in the same building, one a double the other a trip. My son had a similar number of friends to accommodate when he went apartment hunting a few years ago, and that was the solution he came us with. So I wondered why that wasn't considered in your case.

    On the economics, let me see if I can provide some motivation for the prompt. If you know yourself well enough to what will make you take the noble course rather than opportunistically, you may have some insight in how to manage others in how to do likewise. That would make sense as long as you are similarly motivated to the others whom you might manage.

    In your story, however, it seems that you were genuinely surprised by how the others in your group reacted. They ended up being more selfish than you had anticipated. You didn't say directly that the experience hurt you (quite apart from not being in that apartment) but I inferred that it did, which is why you severed from the sorority later. So it might be a useful exercise to reconsider your decision in retrospect. If you do it dispassionately, it is called doing a post mortem analysis. That can be useful to understand how you might have handled the situation if you knew ahead of time that the others were selfish. Was there a way to prevent their opportunism or not?

    I don't want to do that analysis for you, since I don't have the information that is needed to perform it. But, for example, suppose you conclude that there was nothing you could have done. Then you might decide, in addition, that the issue is where rather loose connections - from being in the same sorority - are not sufficient to make people overcome opportunism and people need tighter connections for that to happen. It would still remain a matter how, as a manager, you could produce such tighter connections. But then you would have it as an important goal in your work.

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  2. Joan RobinsonSeptember 25, 2017 at 6:31 PM

    The group never talked about getting a double and a triple for one main reason. In the sorority, everyone lived with large groups of people and it was believed that the more people you live with, the more fun the experience. Usually, girls in a pledge class will all divide up into large groups and get apartments together or move into the "senior house". No one in my group was going to be a senior so no one was interested in the "senior house".

    I identify as an introvert and shy away from confrontation. For these reasons, I do not believe I could not have convinced my former friends to find another place for all of us. In addition, I was surprised and hurt by their decision to get the apartment without me. I did not want to have to convince my friends to room with me or live with people that did not want me. By them choosing to not live with me, I thought they did not value our friendship as much as I did. I took it very personal and did not want to force a living situation with girls that did not want me.

    Also, I don't believe I could have prevented their opportunism, unless I was different. I showed them my true self and was the real me around them. Maybe if I was different or faked my personality to mimic theirs more I would have been more accepted and valued by them. They all went out more than I ever did and all had similar majors, so I can see why they all became friends quickly. I connected with the originally because we all had the same "sorority family", which gave us many opportunities to hang out. At the end of the day, I was not as close with them as I thought and they all were. In hindsight, the friendship might have been inevitable to collapses, but I did not expect it to happen over an apartment.

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