“When I was needed was the only time I felt included.”

Hold a Conversation

In addition to the questions below, please see How to use the questions for reflection.

Clarifying Questions

• How does the speaker find out that he and his roommate are not really good friends?
• Why does he end up not talking to his roommate about feeling excluded?
• How does he account for his feeling of regret?

Interpretive Questions

• Do you think the speaker should have spoken to his roommate about his feeling excluded? Why or why not?
• Do you think the roommate has lost out because the speaker “shut down and deleted” him? Why or why not?

Implication Questions

• If the speaker were your good friend, how would you have wanted to respond to this situation as it occurred second semester?
• If you were one of the roommate’s friends participating in this situation, how might you change your behavior or talk to the roommate to make it less exclusive?

Let us know how the conversation or self-reflection went. Email us or discuss the experience in our comment box.

Transcript for I Thought We Were Really Good Friends

Second semester with my second semester roommate, I definitely didn’t feel very included just because, um, we were just different majors didn’t really get along much, me and his friends. And I thought we were really good friends at first, but I just came to find out that they just, uh, really just wanted me to take advantage of. I know I had a car on campus, and I really didn’t notice that until later on where I would, when I was needed was the only time I felt included. So, no one wants to feel like that. It’s kind of yucky.

I noticed that over the weekend I saw them hanging out with each other, never really told me that they were going out. Unfortunately, I never really got to talk to them about it. At that point I was a person where, if someone did a wrong to me, I would just shut down and delete them all together, but no unfortunately I never really got to talk to them about that. I know my senior year I would see them and I still don’t, I see them and I still don’t really interact with them that much as if I don’t see them and I’ll just walk past.

That’s definitely something I regret. I thought maybe we could have fixed things because I definitely felt like we were friends at first but definitely second semester I just saw that I just really was out of the group I guess.