Letters from the Hedge: Moving Out, Moving On

If everything goes according to plan (I am notoriously pessimistic and won’t be convinced until I actually have the key in my hand) this will be my last night living in a dorm.  Ever.  Furthermore, it will be my last night ever sleeping in a single bedroom, which wouldn’t be as big of a deal except I’ve had the privilege of a single room for the past calendar year.  Most of my things are packed, the proper documentation has been filed, I have a plan for how tomorrow is going to go … I have mixed feelings about leaving.  On one hand, I am 22, and to be honest it’s probably time for me to start growing up.  On the other hand, this has been my home for the past four years, and to think that I’ll never live here again is just so strange.  What am I going to do with this, my last few hours in on-campus housing?  I dunno, probably watch anime or play The Sims.  I never said my life was exciting.

Five Things I Won’t Miss About This Dorm:

1. The soda machine in the basement.  I’m truly not addicted to caffeine at the moment.  I can skip a full day, or even a week, without coffee and not get a headache or depression or any signs of withdrawal whatsoever.  So why do I still happily spend $1.50 on a drink that has over half the caloric value of a full meal??  Probably the only reason I didn’t get very fat and become very poor during my years at college was because the soda machine only accepted cash and I never had any.  Ah, but now it takes credit cards.  Truly the dark times are upon us.

2. The noise.  I was far more sensitive to sound when I was younger, to the point where certain prolonged noises, especially muted talking and laughter, would actually cause me to burst into tears.  But still, it’s very annoying when it’s 3 AM, you have an important midterm in eight hours, and everyone in your hall is still up.  I don’t blame anyone for this.  When 250 young people with wildly varying schedules and interests are crammed into one building, tensions are bound to run high.  I still won’t be sorry to say goodbye to these thin walls and crowded halls, though.

3. The all-you-can-eat food – and the eating environment.  We’re all adults, supposedly, so the serveries offer healthy food as well as hamburgers and pizza, so one can decide for themselves exactly how much calories and nutrition to consume.  I tended to go on kicks where I would eat exactly the same thing for months in a row.  Freshman year, every morning for breakfast I ate Lucky Charms and Yoplait.  People teased me about my unhealthy choices more than once.  My typical breakfast senior year was either scrambled eggs and biscuits or breakfast tacos and a glass of Coke.  That couldn’t have been any healthier, but I also ate almost all of my meals at my desk or computer while working instead of with people, so I was spared any snarky comments.  I’m very afraid of people watching me eat or cook now because I have no idea what they’re going to say about me.  Or my food.

4. The distractions.  It’s become a running joke (?) that I hate chemistry, even though I’m a chemistry major.  My hatred of chemistry courses, combined with the multiple other options available to me, created a study environment that would probably be challenging to a much more disciplined person than myself.  My boyfriend, whose GPA is approximately 5 million points higher than mine, lived off campus for three of his four years and consequently (he says) found it easier to concentrate because he wasn’t around for any study breaks or campus parties.  Since I don’t have a car and can’t afford the $2.50 for the light rail 7 times a week, I expect\hope that the same thing will happen to me.

5. The fire alarms.  Let’s see, what was my favorite fire alarm?  The one where it was 30-something degrees out and I forgot to bring a sweater?  Or the one where I got caught getting out of the shower and had to go outside with a wet body and wet hair, soaking through my pajamas?  Or the one the night (morning) before all the math finals?  I didn’t have a math final that semester, thank God, but I felt so awful for everyone who did.

Five Things I Will Miss:

1. Free everything.  Free toilet paper and soap.  Free heating, electricity, Internet, and water.  OK, technically it isn’t free because someone has to pay your tuition, but it all comes included, which is nice.

2. Free maintenance and housekeeping.  Yes, we have communal bathrooms, but they get cleaned for us.  Over the summer I had sugar ants in my room.  I just asked maintenance to come spray my bedroom, and within a few days all the ants were gone, and I could use my laptop again.  (I’ve heard horror stories about ants crawling into machines.)

3. The all-you-can eat food.  I probably ruined my cholesterol and triglyceride levels, but those waffles, bean and beef burritos, savory crepes, and dinner rolls were so worth it.

4. The distractions.  The last time I visited my boyfriend he said, “You know, I sort of envy you.”

“Why?” I asked, because I am really obtuse sometimes and forget that I actually have it pretty good.

“Because you’re involved with your school,” he said.  “You were involved with theatre, and writing, and community outreach, and -”

“Shhhh,” I said, even though it’s true, I was so heavily involved with different extracurriculars at one point that I ended up on the email listservs of both the student-run theatre company and the English department.  Although my grades almost certainly suffered, I have no regrets.

5. The friends.  Once I got that tiny little boost of energy to get up off the floor and go outside, I found a whole range of wonderful people.  I met them at parties, and through study breaks, and in classes, and through Facebook (!) and through student jobs, and the more people I met the more of their friends I met.  Since my university is pretty small, I could almost always find something in common with any new person – maybe we had both been in the same chemistry section freshman year, or maybe we went to the same concert at the music school?  Since my university is also physically small, I could meet up with friends at a moment’s notice.  Sometimes I didn’t even bother to change out of my pajamas or put on a bra, which let’s be honest, would be a bad idea anywhere outside of a university campus.

—

These four years have been a wild ride, with some of the best – and worst! – moments of my life happening in the very building I’m now writing from.  But now it’s time for me to go, so someone else can begin the wonderful, terrifying, crazy, life-changing experience that is life at college.

There are approximately 4 months, 1 week, and 4 days until I graduate.

The Difference Between “Lonely” and “Alone”

My 21st birthday is coming up this week, and I was trying to think of a celebratory event that I might enjoy.  Clubbing?  Out of the question.  The science museum?  Somehow I doubt most people would enjoy playing with samples of different types of oil in the same way I would.

There remained inviting people on my regular, ideal Saturday night, which involves drinking coffee while reading poetry and medical literature at the discount bookstore, then heading home for a TV dinner, Coke, and an old animated movie.  I then realized that, not only would a lot of people not enjoy this way of spending their Saturday night, but my enjoyment of it would be ruined, because I would no longer be alone.

During my first two years of college, I told everyone (myself included) that anything else could happen during the course of the week, anything at all, and I’d still be okay as long as I had those precious few hours on Saturday to myself.  But as I began to make friends and become more heavily involved in clubs and activities that required my Saturday nights, as well, to be taken up, I realized that my “alone time” would no longer be feasible.

Let’s face it, college is not built for people who like to spend extended amounts of time alone.  I live on campus, which means that I am rarely more than fifteen feet away from another person at any given time.  Eat dinner in your room, or say that you want to spend Saturday night by yourself, and suddenly you’re being “antisocial” and people are “concerned.”  Pfft.

There’s also a more dangerous side to being someone who recharges by spending time alone; sometimes you don’t want to be alone.  The fact is, as much as I hate to admit it, humans are meant to live in groups.  We evolved from creatures who live in groups, we have created elaborate cities and countries to ensure that we do live in groups, and we get lonely when we spend too much time without physical or emotional contact.  (Of course, there are exceptions, but this is the experience of the average person.)

I am a couple days shy of being 21 and I am still trying to figure out how to successfully navigate social interactions involving being alone and being lonely.  If only one could quantitate the exact amount of time needed alone without veering into lonely territory.  If only it were acceptable to simply say, “Hey, I don’t feel like hanging out with anyone tonight,” or “Hey, can you come give me a hug?”

Last night, I walked out to the edge of campus and sat on the swing set, gazing into the frightening, beautiful, vast city lights of Houston, and I felt very, very small and very lonely.  Experience has taught me that even the most reliable people will never be there for you 100% of the time, so at times like that you have to either reach inward for some vestige of strength or turn outward to religion or philosophy for help.  I’ve never been very good at following organized religion.  My relationship with God is complex, changing, and not easily labeled or constrained (as I’ve learned, I am far from the only young person who feels like this.)

So, instead, I stared very hard at the lights until they began to blur (I’m nearsighted, so it wasn’t very hard) and pretended that I was floating through outer space.  My feet were resting on the muddy ground, and the more I concentrated, the more I could feel a slight hum, some combination of my pulse and a nearby generator, perhaps.  There was not another person to be seen, but I could still feel their presence, in the hospitals and in the nearby dorm building, and it gave me the odd feeling of being in two places at once, on Earth and in the furthest reaches of the universe, simultaneously.  I looked down at my phone, which I often feel is my lifeline, and put it aside.

I’ve often tried to describe the feeling of aloneness and silence that I find so rejuvenating.  I suppose it has something to do with balance.  There are definitely times when I need to be around people and hug them and talk to them, and there are times when I do not need anyone else, not at all.  I feel like many other people are the same way.  It’s just a question of how much of each is necessary for our individual personalities.  The balance is not easy to find, but balancing anything is never easy.

In the few minutes I had left before I had to go back to my work, I pushed off from the ground and began to swing.

Quotes from my professors

Social psych:

Was it just me or was today awesome?  Thank you for participating and being engaged and generally being terrific.  If you can keep your energy and enthusiasm up for this class, like you did today, then we are going to have so much fun and learn so much. 

I can hardly wait for Friday. 

Physics:

What I’m going to do is rub this teflon rod with this cat pelt. Unfortunately, this means one animal did die for the sake of Physics 102. It was an ugly cat, though, so nobody really cared.

Biochem:

The best Christmas cookies are made with lard.  Not that you really want to think about lard while you’re eating them, but it does make them all nice and flaky.

Religion:

So you’re probably asking yourself, “Does this mean they were all high?”  The answer is yes.  They were flying.  Not metaphorically, either.  Literally.  They were flying.

Poetry:

There is a place in this class for anything you are interested in.  Science, photography, animals – anything.  This is a class where you can really push the limits of poetry and achieve incredible results.

It’s going to be a good semester.