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Moving into a new share house can be a scary experience and you want to do as much research as possible, on the house and the area you’re moving into, and if you can, meet the housemates. Alternatively you can live in a horror story like my housemates and I did. 

Our share house was home to NINE medical students. Luckily each room had its own ensuite, so we had no bathroom related diplomatic crises, but little did we know what we were getting ourselves in for. Our house was promised to be soundproof, but the reality of it was nothing like the advertisement. Nine medical students are really LOUD. If you wanted to get a free lecture, you could pull up a chair in the hallway and be treated to a chorus of housemates reading their notes aloud. That was one of the less awkward things you could hear through the paper-thin walls in our house. Studying in one of our downstairs rooms was almost impossible because people seemed permanently stationed in the lounge room or kitchen and even if with the consideration of lowered voices, you could hear every single word.

The most disruptive part was living with others who had distinct and conflicting sleep cycles. Some of us adapt into early birds in medical school to make the 8am lectures, whereas others resume their undergrad night owl lifestyle and these two types of students DO NOT MIX. Our house became the house of the walking undead. Forever being kept awake when we wanted to be asleep by noisy housemates. Want to be asleep at 3am? Too bad - there will be doors scheduled to slam, clanging of cooking pots and pans in the kitchen, and the TV on at full volume. Perhaps we’ll just skip the 8am then and sleep in today to make up for it. Nope, half the house will be up at 7:30am loudly complaining about the topic of the 8am lecture... might as well get up. Maybe I’ll come home for an afternoon nap to catch up on those ZZZs? Turns out someone has invited friends over for a study session, more giggles than study, all afternoon and stretching into the night.

Pro tips when choosing a share house: find respectful people to live with. Meet them before you move in, to make sure you’ll get along or at least work around each other’s needs. Figure out what your sleep cycle is and if it is somewhat complementary with your housemates, and most importantly, under no circumstances is it ever a good idea to live with nine people.