First Semester

My first semester away at school was long and hard. I had picked one of the hardest programs at the university, and one of the best of it's kind. I spent what seemed like days at a time working in the first year design studios. I saw more of Slocum Hall than I did of my own bed.

It was probably better that way, my roommate being an art student tended to monopolize space with her projects. And.as anyone who has ever lived in a freshman dorm can attest, space isn't something that is widely available. I spent most of my days and nights drafting and drawing, building models and designing Le Corbusier style buildings.

I tended to either hang out with fellow architecture students, or just the people who lived on my floor with me. Freshman year, seems to always be a weird trip like that. I mean what a social experiment a freshman dorm really is.

Take a hundred or so late teens who may or may not have anything in common with each other beyond all being new students in a strange environment and place them all on a floor to live together for a year. It's amazing how quickly friendships can form over something so simple as sharing a living space. And even more amazing when those bonds are put to the test outside that living space.

Those first few weeks those people who all lived on Sadler 7 felt like the best friends I had ever had in my life. Like we would always be friends. We traveled in packs, as all freshman tend to. For those first few weeks we thought we would be friends forever. It's like all our social knowledge had been flushed down the toilet.

After a while, though, the new-ness of the situation wore off. People's real personalities began to shine through. And the striking differences in our views of the world began to push and /or pull us. Suddenly the girl down the hall who had been so entertaining the first week was now the girl down the hall who wouldn't shut the fuck up. The girl who seemed to be so outgoing and friendly, was now annoying and needy. The girl you thought was just like you, you realize is nothing like you. You share nothing in common except living quarters on the 7th floor of Sadler Hall.

Those friends you thought would last forever, you're now praying will go their separate ways.