Brock Kawana
Professor Harrison
English 101
15 February 2009
A Roommate Nose
“Our sense of smell can be extraordinarily precise, yet it’s almost impossible to describe how something smells to someone who hasn’t smelled it.” (Ackerman, 6)
A smell is a whirl-wind of scents and sensations. A smell accumulates and sends the message to the brain. The brain then decides whether or not the smell is a positive or negative scent. This determines a reaction to the scent whether it be positive or negative the brain will describe it as an adjective. “Instead we tend to describe how they make us feel. Something smells “disgusting,” “intoxicating,” “sickening,” “pleasurable,” “delightful,” “pulse-reviving,” “hypnotic,” or “revolting.” (Ackerman, 7)
In my own experience of leaving for college, I had to learn how to share a room with another person. My room would no longer be a personal place. I had always thought of a room of a place to have my own space. To me a room is a place of solidarity and quiet from the rest of the world. My idea of a room is as if I was in a psychiatric ward, without the stray jacket. With a roommate there would be rules and etiquette to follow. That meant I could no longer jump up and down on Saturday mornings in my boxers, and on my bed to NSYNC’s greatest hits. The room would not just be my room, but our room together. It is a cramp ten by ten box for two adult men to live in. It is almost as uncomfortable as a Mormon man taking his twelve wives out on date night. The feeling of anxiety is always apparent at the beginning of the relationship with a new roommate. “What can I touch?” “What can I not touch?” “What if I need to use one of their tissues?” “Will they be angry?”
When I first came to college, I would treat my room as if I was staying at a guest’s house. That was my attempt at being polite. That was until I walked in the one day and was intoxicated with the worst odor I had ever smelled. The stench was unbearable. I could feel my tongue recoil into the back of my throat causing me to gag. My eyes watered up, my knees buckled beneath me, and I was so light headed I just wanted to pass out. It was too much to take in all at once. I would rather been in all the drawers with the dead people in the morgue. I started to develop wild theories of how my roommate killed himself and is laying in his closet that I could not force myself to open. It smelled that awful.
This is why I have developed the unprecedented way of getting rid of these smells. A roommate who just does not care to clean their self or their room is not acceptable. This process of cleanliness is due to: I would never want anybody else to go through what I went through.
This three-step process called, A Roommate Nose, is to incorporate the bond between roommates. To allow a fresh walk into a dorm room and smell the sanitation. This is for the conservative roommate who does not want to be blunt by saying, “You smell like shit!”
Step 1: Body Odor.
A simple concept children are taught at a young age: If a person showers and uses the proper techniques they will usually smell better than they did before. If a roommate’s towel has not been used or if it has never been seen, this may be an indication of not showering. If they do not have shampoo or soap, this is a clear cut sign of a body odor alert. A way of mentioning it would be to ask if you could use their liquid soap, or if they have any extra spray deodorant. If their smell is that ghastly, be bold and buy the two for one pack of deodorant or soap and give them one. Also if they find a significant other, they will start to try and smell better. Taking them out and finding them a partner would be a good idea also. That may be the first or last resort, whichever technique you prefer.
Step 2: The Bed.
“There are more than eighty-four percent in the United States that are hostesses to dust mites. These microscopic critters live in your sheets and feed of your dead skin. Their fecal matter and corpses contribute to asthma and allergies.” (Loeb)
With a roommate in college, dust mites are the least amount of worries. If they have body odor, where do they go with it every night? The answer would be: their bed. Hence the bed is absorbing all of their smells when they lay in it for so many hours at a time. If they are sexually active in that same bed and don’t shower, there will be a strong disgusting smell. This should come to no surprise by any means. A smell of body odor and the passionate aroma of dumpster will arise in the dorm. A way of fixing this dilemma would be too deliberately wash the sheets while your roommate is in the room. It would be preferable to choose later at night when they also have nothing else to do. This is when you would want to be deliberate in saying, “Would you like to do you wash with me?” If they decline and the smell is that rancid, surprise them by doing the wash for them. The bed will make up most of the smell in the room due to that is where most college students spend their time in the dorm. Consequently by doing this, your own sheets will be clean. In all actuality it is killing two birds with one stone.
Step 3: Garbage.
“Flies lay eggs in heaps of trash to form the maggots that form. It creates a disgusting forming of flies around the garbage.” (Faletra)
A sanitation engineer would be the proper title for a garbage man or woman. We take this work for granted once we start taking garbage down so many flights of stairs. When you walk into a dorm room and see mounds upon mounds of garbage as if the dorm was a landfill then there is a problem. This problem is easier than the rest. Set up a schedule of when the garbage needs taken down to the basement. If your roommate does not approve of this solution or is unwilling to take down their garbage, simply put it in their bed. This may lead you back to step two, but if they do not retaliate they will get the hint that you are pissed.
The A Roommate Nose system may not be the most orthodox system to work with, but the results are unmatched. If your roommate does not respond to the system that we are providing, then we will personally come to your room and fix the problem. If you are puzzled after reading this, thinking to yourself that none of this applies to your roommate then you may be the one who it applies too. If this is the cases please read the steps again and think about your own self hygiene, and for God’s sake be courteous of others sense of smell!
Goal Statements
Before:
I want to be able to complete the paper with less grammatical errors. I am trying to pitch my step by step process of thru an advertisement. I would want the reader to be interested in this product and take valuable lessons from it. I am writing to one person in particular so I believe I am then allowed to use the word, “you”. I do not want to use it excessively just when it was necessary in referring to the one person I am personally writing to.
After:
I was more consistent with my sentence structure. I did not want to have long drawn out sentences. I tried to use information from my previous papers that was circled or highlighted about the grammar, and put it to use. I did use the word you, because I am directing this paper to one individual. Therefore I believe since it is to them, the, you would be referring to them.
