Finding a new roommate

EmperorSeth

I have a lot of issues with my life, but we'll focus on the most immediate problem for now. Earlier this year, my roommate, who I had for a good four years now, left to get a house with his fiance. Reasonable enough. So I got a roommate for the summer. Unfortunately, he was only here for a summer internship, and since then he left for school again. I hoped that over the summer, I might find a new job and thus would move anyway.

So, yeah. That didn't so much happen. For now, I'm stuck with a new lease and no roommate, which is a problem, as I can't afford my rent nearly doubling. I need to find some way to get roommates, and so far my friends have been useless. I've tried Craigslist, and all I got were spammers pretending to be from foreign countries. Even roommates. com failed so far; the few emails I get never get back to me, even when they leave phone numbers.

So what do you recommend? What venues should I try but haven't? Am I doing something wrong that would make Craigslist or other online sites more effective?

Tl;dr: I need a new roommate. How do I find one?

Hlubocky

Have you thought about finding a job in Chicago (assuming you are living in Batavia)? I think you would have better luck finding a roommate in the city, plus the jobs are cooler and pay more in general.

EDIT: Glancing at the blog link, it looks like you have been trying to bust into city living for a little while...

What type of positions are you looking for? Your avatar thinger says software engineer. What kind of experience do you have? Where did you go to school? etc?

EmperorSeth

Hlubocky wrote: »

Have you thought about finding a job in Chicago (assuming you are living in Batavia)? I think you would have better luck finding a roommate in the city, plus the jobs are cooler and pay more in general.

EDIT: Glancing at the blog link, it looks like you have been trying to bust into city living for a little while...

What type of positions are you looking for? Your avatar thinger says software engineer. What kind of experience do you have? Where did you go to school? etc?

Well, that's my long-termier plan. I was looking for a roommate first to offset my money problems with the intent to expand my advice questions, but we could look into this as well.

I graduated with a BS in Computer Science, but honestly I don't really like programming. I only took the route because I thought it was the only path to take to get into video game design. So that's my ideal position; some form of video game designer. But I'm aware that's nearly impossible, given my location and level of experience. I would take any entry level job in the video game industry, or otherwise some sort of writer or similar position. Really, if it could pay enough to survive and I think I could do the job, I'd take anything if it meant moving into the city.

Hlubocky

Ah this is going to be tough then. I'm sure you have read plenty of articles about the game industry. There seem to be about three routes into whatever position you want. You can be a programmer, an artist, or start at the bottom as QA/tester. Both the programming and the art route require that you be very good in your field. Given that you said you don't like programming, it seems QA is the only option.

I was from the area (St. Charles) and graduated with a BS/MS in Computer Science. I always thought that I wanted to do programming for video games, but then I took a job in Chicago in the financial industry that pays a lot more. I get to work with young and intelligent people on cool stuff that doesn't involve games.

You might want to be thinking along the lines of finding a job as a software developer despite not being all that interested. It will definitely pay the bills, and you can build your resume and work on that social life too. It sounds like you might be stuck in a rut, so maybe you just need a little jumpstart.