Apartment hunting in Taipei (part 1)

On Thursday, I moved into a room near YongAn Market Station, about three stops from where I will go to school (at Shida, or National Taiwan Normal University).
When I went apartment hunting with Oliver (it's the English name of a friend of a friend) last week, we visited many studios around the university, but to no avail. Since I am on a scholarship, I have a pretty tight budget, so when we looked online, we used the filter functions on the internet site www.591.com.tw.
The funny thing was, what looked great on paper was not exactly up to par when we saw it live (on a side note, I'm happy I didn't try to arrange something before coming to Taiwan).
Oliver, a soft-spoken young man with thick black-rimmed glasses and usually wearing a cap of some sort, would bring me to what seemed to be Taipei's hottest new cafes (with wifi de rigeur) and bring his laptop to do some internet searches.
"This one looks good," he'd say, pointing to the many traditional Chinese characters I was still struggling to learn.
"It has internet connection, cable TV, a laundry machine, a double bed, and gas and water is included," he said.
But upon visiting the room we realized that we ignored the fact that the room was about the size of a walk-in closet. The double bed took up three-quarters of the room, and it was fortunate that the television was flat-screen, because otherwise there would be no space between the bed and the wall. On top of that, the window had an amazing view of...another building at arm's length.
To make a long story short, I ended up taking a room in someone's (we'll call him Mr. Zhang) apartment. I really worried about this after moving in as it's the first time I've lived with someone in over 5 years (if you don't include the time I lived with my mom). I worried about it so much, in fact, that I started doubting my decision. Should I have moved into the tiny apartment, that would have been all to myself? Or should I have tried to find some flat mates?