College students often think they are ready for everything. I know I did, but I was sorely mistaken — I was in no way ready for what was about to befall me. After my second …

In the early ’80s, at 19, I enrolled in a culinary school in Hyde Park, New York. I’d planned on finding an apartment off campus, but after getting lost and stuck in a traffic jam …

My ex-girlfriend at the end of the 20th Century (1995–1998) and I made the mistake of letting an acquaintance stay with us. This fellow, “Bill,” was from Los Angeles (or so he said) and living …

I was scraping by as a line cook in San Francisco in the mid-’80s when my landlord offered me the job of managing a 24-unit apartment building on Pine Street. It sounded like easy money: …

“I can see them now! They’re coming over the walls!” Chilling words, made even more frightening by the fact that they were coming from my roommate’s bedroom. Steve had shown up out of the blue …

The University of California San Diego has a system regarding on-campus housing for returning sophomores. Toward the end of the spring quarter, all freshman students seeking on-campus housing for the following year are put into …

When I first met my roommate, she was a very involved and social person. We were fine for the first year; neither of us was home often, as we kept busy. In the second year, …

It must be because he just rode his bike here to meet me, I thought. Why else would a twenty-something male who appeared to be in good health be sweating profusely on a cool fall …

Since I was “in between” apartments and sleeping on a friend’s couch, I was overjoyed when Steve, a regular at the restaurant I was waitressing at, offered me the sublet of his room for the …

In the summer of 2001, shortly after graduating with a master’s in politics, I landed a one-year internship with the Congressional Hunger Center to study poverty and food banks in Phoenix, Arizona. I was young, …