When I was in high school, I thought that after I graduated, I would have an awesome summer, and then in August I would go right off to college. I would live in the dorms, and have four awesome years of college experience, and then I would graduate from college, and go on to have another four awesome years of grad school. So, according to my plans, by this point in my life, I should be in the middle of grad school. Not a jobless bum who sits on the couch all day. I wanted to end up with a degree in zoology. My dream was that, after all my years of school, my job would be to travel around the world to amazing, exotic locations and get to study amazing, exotic animals and just have an absolute blast and a half. And then, after I was tired of many years of amazing travels, I would settle down in whichever is the best zoo in the world, and live the rest of my days working as a zookeeper. How awesome of a life would that be? Maybe they would even give me my own show on Animal Planet, documenting the adventures of my amazing life.
Around my junior year, my parents and I started looking for schools. To my surprise, there aren't (or at least there weren't back then) a whole lot of colleges that offer zoology in the NYC area. I found some really awesome ones in, like, South Africa and Australia, but my mom was not so keen on the idea of her 17-year-old daughter leaving home for the first time to go to school on another continent. I guess I agreed with her, because I didn't fight for it. I also figured that I could do South Africa/Australia for grad school. I had pretty good grades, but I wasn't getting in to any ivy league schools. I needed to find a school that I could actually get into but that still offered what I was looking for. I ended up finding this school in Allentown, Pennsylvania called Cedar Crest College, that was just about half way in between my dad's house in PA and my mom's house in NY. They didn't offer zoology, but they did offer something called "conservation biology and biodiversity" which was close enough for me at the time. If you're wondering what exactly that is... well, you can look it up. I went with my dad up to visit the school, and really liked it.
So, the time for applying for colleges rolled around, and I hadn't looked at any others. So I only applied to Cedar Crest. Good thing I got in, huh? My senior year of high school went by like a blur. I was on the yearbook staff, and devoted most of my time to that. There was one day where we stayed at school working on it for so long, the janitors had to kick us out around midnight. And no, that is not an exaggeration. Also, for those of you readers who may be in school- did you know how late the janitors stay there, cleaning up the school and doing other stuff (like watching Jeopardy)? You should appreciate them more for all their hard work. I graduated from high school, and the summer went by rather uneventfully. In August, we packed up my stuff, and moved me up to Cedar Crest College. There were orientations, roommate introductions, and tearful parent good byes. I feel incredibly stupid to admit this, but I didn't realize until the orientation that this was an all girls school. How does this even happen? I don't know. Am I really that unobservant? I guess so. I was incredibly nervous about living away from my parents for the first time, living with a stranger, and dealing with a college work load. The roommate was on some sort of team. Maybe it was track, or softball? Or maybe she played an instrument? Which ever it was, it caused her to have to go to school a week before the other students who were not in this musical athletic program. So by the time I had gotten there, she was already settled in. We were warned ahead of time about these special program kids and how they would get to go to school a week earlier than everyone else. I had hoped my roommate wouldn't be one of them, because that meant they'd totally get the good side of the room and everything.
My roommate's name was Jessica. She was a cheerleader in high school, though, at the risk of sounding judgmental and stereo-type-y, she didn't look like one. She was obsessed with Sponge Bob Square Pants. She played her music very loudly (from her computer, not an instrument) whenever she felt like it. And she ate my food. To my knowledge, she never went in my mini fridge and took food. She may have sneaked a yogurt or a piece of cheese or something that I never knew about. But, luckily for the state of my emotions at the time, she never, like, ate the whole bowl of home-made soup my mom sent me back with. I probably would have cried for a week. But anything that didn't need to be refrigerated (chips, cookies, crackers, pop tarts), she felt she was welcomed to. We never actually made an agreement about whether or not we were sharing food. It was just understood that we wouldn't. At least on my end. We had always bought our own food, so I assumed we would just eat our own food. I never ate her food. She didn't eat mine while I was there. I'd just come home to an empty box of Better Cheddars in the trash. A box that I hadn't even opened yet, and that I didn't get any of. This was a problem for me because there were no grocery stores within walking distance of the campus, and I didn't have a car. I had to wait for a weekend that one of my parents were able to come and pick me up, to be able to leave the campus. She also never offered to drive me to the store, or asked if I wanted to go with her. Not that I expected her to. But, if I had a car, and a roommate who didn't have one, and I also helped myself to this roommate's food, I would offer them a ride to the store every once and a while.
Neither of us really made any attempt to be friends with each other. She had made her friends, and I had made... well, the choice to keep to myself. There was only one other girl in the whole school that I talked to in a friendly manner. She was a large, black lesbian named Leni, who lived two doors down from me. She actually even invited me to come out to a club with her and her friends one weekend. But, since my birthday is in December, I was still 17 when I started college, so I wasn't old enough to get into clubs. She'd invite me to come watch TV in her room when the roommate was blasting music, and invite me to eat dinner with her and her friends in the cafeteria. I'd take her up on these offers, but I didn't make much effort otherwise. I think I was too depressed then to realize, but I could have gotten a really great friend if I had just tried a little bit more. And possibly even some friends by association, since her friends never openly objected to me hanging around her room with them, or eating dinner with them. One time, the roommate an I had left our door open, and I was laying in bed watching TV. Leni walked by and tossed something at me. It was an index card, and written in pink highlighter it said, "Smile, damn it! -<3 Leni" I still have it. I guess it means a lot to me because it meant that someone in that place had at least some concern for my happiness.
Well, if I tell my whole story, this post is going to get waaay too long. I'm going to stop here, and finish it in another post. This will be a two part-er. Possibly three? Otherwise, this one post could go on forever. That's a pretty good way to get people to come back and read more, though, isn't it? (winkwink)
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