It’s that time of year – high school is winding down, seniors are graduating and the next wave of kids with cystic fibrosis are about to head off to college. While it certainly is an exciting time in a young person’s life, it can also be pretty stressful, especially for parents as they send their kids off into the world (just ask my parents *eye roll*).
The first question about heading off to college for people with CF always revolves around the roommate. We’ve talked about it a few times on the podcast, but we wanted to dive deeper into the topic, so Julia and I decided to invite a couple of our old college roommates onto the podcast to help put some of these CF parents at ease.
My sophomore college roommates (from left to right): Vince, David, Carmen and ME.
Carmen Gatta was my college roommate at BC during my sophomore, junior and senior years. He lived across the hall from me and my freshman roommate (who was a good friend of mine from high school and also lived with me for all four years of school), and we quickly became fast friends. When I went off to school I knew I wanted to have as typical a college experience as possible, and roommates were a huge part of that! To recap, I lived with one other guy my freshman year, three other guys my sophomore and junior years, and finally 4 other guys my senior year. I had a direct roommate (David – my friend from high school) freshman and sophomore years, while I had my own room in a suite style apartment junior and senior years.
Julia, on the other hand, had a little bit different of an experience when she shipped off to Fordham. She was assigned a suite style apartment with three randomly assigned roommates for her freshman year. Little did she know that one of them, Miranda Borkan, would quickly become one of her best friends and help her out through a very difficult health situation during her first semester of school.
Ultimately Julia and I figured out that our college roommates would be essential parts of the cystic fibrosis support system.
