The worst part of Room Draw is before it even happens.

The start of second semester is always rough. After six weeks of doing absolutely nothing, waking up before noon, with snow on the ground and a curious brown substance which smells suspiciously like soy sauce always makes coming back after Interterm the hardest transition back to Amherst life-at least for me.

But what makes second semester even worse is that you have to start thinking about where you want to live next year, and with whom. And it has never failed to be the hot topic of conversation among my friends every year come February-or even earlier. There are all these nightmare scenes running through your mind-maybe I'll end up in a one-room double! On the Hill! The chance of living somewhere by yourself, far away from all of your friends, suddenly becomes very real.

What I hate most about Room Draw is that it forces you to choose who your friends are and exactly how many of them you have. Does anyone have a set group of seven friends who are all perfectly comfortable with living with each other and have no other friends outside the group? And how about that one person that everyone likes but no one can live with?

Room Draw creates all this high school-esque drama that everyone thought they'd left behind. Someone can't stand someone else, much less live with him/her. Another person is so messy that no one can stand living with him/her. No one's social circle actually fits into a tidy little Room Draw group.

What usually happens is that a lot of Room Draw groups end up seeming completely random, because they're made up of friends and acquaintances who know each other casually through mutual friends and get into Room Draw together just because they'll make up an ideal room group number. You end up having to live with people you're barely friends with, who may or may not be easy to live with. Isn't that what you tried to avoid by going into Room Draw with a group of friends you knew? And if you can't get the suite that you wanted, how are you going to split up the people in the group so that people who like each other will live with each other, and people who don't, won't?

But there might not even be a real reason to do this. Is there really any truth to the fact that a larger Room Draw group will give you a better chance at getting a higher lottery number? There are so many different little theories and rumors about how to beat the system-applying to a theme house with lots of singles, going into Room Draw with as many people as possible.

I think everyone knows in the back of their mind that their lottery number, and the quality of their rooms, will be completely dependent on luck. That something so important is based on nothing but luck must be disturbing to most Amherst students, most of whom are repressed control freaks. Maybe making up these theories is a way of pretending we can control the system.

Somehow, Room Draw always makes you feel like you have no friends, even if you already have people you know you're going to room with. And there are always people who somehow just fall between the cracks, people whose friends are all RCs or in theme housing, or who just don't fit into one set group of friends.

Last Thursday I was rudely awakened by my friends talking about Room Draw. "Don't be so worried about Room Draw!" admonished one of my friends. "Is it because you feel like you don't have any friends?" Well, yes. When you want to get a suite and you don't have enough friends to fill it up, and can't think of anyone who would want to room with you, it does make for a decent blow to the ego.

My way of dealing with it is just not thinking about it. I always feel like it's too early to start thinking about it when people start talking about it in early February. I've left everything up to my friends, including the worrying. Selfish? Maybe. But I guess I'll only have myself to blame when I end up living with one of their friends who doesn't shower.