freshman year: thoughts from college lc.

I found this little "essay" of mine in my old email account. I had sent it to myself. And no one else. I'm sure someone read it at some point, but then again, I hope they didn't. I'm going to attempt to analyze and dissect freshman year lc.


April 13, 2004
It's been a year since we went to prom, put on those caps and gowns and swore for a whole summer we'd be "friends forever." I'm sure we did that starting in like, 4th grade, not just the summer after graduation. We promised emails, letters, and phone calls, but suddenly, more suddenly than anyone thought we were swept away by a new group of people. This group was a hand-picked group, you chose them and they chose you. Apparently, I felt like my friends from home were not hand picked by me to be my friend. Oh, the agony.

Everyone was going through the same experience. I'm guessing the experience was moving away to college? We all had shower shoes, plans to call our friends from home daily, and not wanting to eat in the cafeteria. We shared our past lives in the first few weeks and slowly we began to learn everything about the girl across the hall, like we had known them forever. We would go home and still love our friends there, but things are different now. They have their lives, we have ours. Before it was only one life? What? I am fairly confident I was independent in high school, but this leads me to believe I felt smothered.

Here, your best friends live next door...literally. That's a dorm, genius. You walk three feet to talk. You check in with them when you return from class, a movie, dinner, or anytime you leave the vicinity of your room. So true, I bet my friends in the dorm thought I was so annoying. You never did that at home, you never called your friends to tell them you were "running to Wal-Mart, be back in a minute." You also never rode the bus to class with your friends. Before college riding the bus was definitely not appropriate. Duh.

Now instead of planning for prom and graduation, you plan for functions and decide what time is appropriate to "go out." Probably because colleges don't have proms. You stay up late...every night, not just on Friday. REBEL. Things are messed up here, Thursday is the big night and Fridays are crap. Still baffles me. Can't get my mind around it.

Now instead of promising to be "Friends Forever" you promise to still be friends when you move into whatever house, apartment, or dorm you'll be living in next year. Things will change, people will go from being your BFF, to your close friend, to your friend, to your acquaintance, to the girl you lived next to your freshman year. But, SOME will be in your wedding, some will be present when you give birth not in the room hopefully, some will help you grieve when your parents die, some you will name your children after, some will name kids after you, some you won't ever see again..but most, you will always remember. I must've been the most profound kid to EVER move out of a dorm. I mean. What? I'm starting to wonder if I wrote this the night my roommate gave me an adderall for the first time ever?

You'll remember the talks late at night long after the swimmer told you to "show some respect," you'll remember running into someone in the bathroom way back in August and now you can't go to the bathroom without telling everyone who lives in your pod again, I'm sure my dorm mates thought I was awesome, you'll remember the late night deliveries, the talks on AOL when the person you are IMing lives right across the hall, the drunken comments not by me. NOT BY ME., the parties, borrowing things sure, I can see it now: I'm 75 and telling my grand kids-- I remember this one time in college-- I borrowed something from someone, sharing things, making fun of roommates, the prank calls, and more importantly you'll remember the people- most of them forever. Way to wrap it up, lc. That's deep stuff.

Ok, when I really sit and think about it-- it's scary how much of that turned out to be completely factual. And then, it goes back to being completely embarrassing and shameful. Either way, can't wait for my BFFs to be present when I give birth! Y'all get in line, ok!