Living in an apartment near USF, you will probably want to have roommates. Roommates not only help you to pay less rent, they also let you live with old or new friends!
Finding a good roommate is pretty much essential to enjoying your apartment living experience. Roommates can make your experience memorable. The key is finding ones who will be memorable in a good way!
Many USF apartments are rented by the room, which means that you may not have control over your roommates. The apartment complex will generally do their best to accommodate your needs and preferences. They will probably have you fill out a survey detailing some of your habits and parts of your personality. If, however, you know people that you want to live with, most places, even if they do roommate matching, will accommodate your requests.
To find a good roommate in your apartment near USF, first consider yourself. Are you a slob, a neat freak, or somewhere in-between? In my experience, about 70% of roommate issues are because of differing neatness standards. Even if you are really good friends with someone beforehand, you may come to cringe at the sight of them if they don't clean like you do. Usually in these instances, the neater person suffers more than the messier, but both of you will be unhappy. Consider how much you value the friendship of your future roommate if you foresee any issues in regards to their neatness level not matching yours.
Another potential roommate issue will be guests in your USF apartment. Some people want to have friends over all the time. Others would rather study quietly in their room. Some people may want to have parties at the apartment every weekend, and others may prefer a more low-key activity. Your friends are probably going to be more like you in this respect – hence your friendship. But, you may want to ask them what their expectations are for having guests over. Will they need to leave at a certain time? Will each roommate be responsible for their own friends' messes? Set up a few boundaries before this becomes an issue rather than later.
An additional area where you will want to set up boundaries is with each person's personal belongings. This includes clothes, toiletries, and, of course, food. You may think its ok to grab a granola bar from your roommate's stash – but they might not agree! They may think that borrowing your shirt is ok as long as they return it, but this might bother you. Talk about what you expect before you move in. You may be surprised at what your roommates think is acceptable behavior. Hopefully, you will all come to agree on certain boundaries, such as asking before borrowing clothes, or creating a "community food pile" for food that anyone can eat.
Having a good experience with your roommates will take some effort – as does any good relationship. Living with people is a very unique and eye-opening experience. You will learn that people live very differently from what you may be used to, but that's ok. Part of attending college is gaining some "real-life" experiences.