Perfect Roommate Anonymous

Of course, the preliminary criteria for a roommate is someone who won't leave half-eaten food and wadded-up paper and underwear all over the floor, who won't blast AC/DC at 2 a.m. and who won't invite her new boyfriend over to spend the night. But more importantly, I would love to have a roommate who is somehow un-averageenergetic and unconventional and passionate about her work. Maybe she would be a budding artist, and plaster the walls with her drawings so that contorted faces and dark still lifes and Picasso-esque figures stare down at me while I write my English paper. Or, she might be a neurobiology major and read me long passages out of The Functional Neuroanatomy of Man while I'm brushing my teeth in the morning. She would hang potted wisteria from the ceilings and prefer Edgar Allen Poe to Lord Byron; she would read Nabokov sitting on the floor.

In addition to being spirited, my perfect roommate would also be from a different cultural or religious background. Some of my best friends are Indian, Italian, and Polish, Hindu, Catholic, and Jewish, and together we have had some of the most interesting conversations about our families' different traditions--and some of the most spirited debates about...