a dash of ash

august 24, 2019

College is not what I was expecting it to be, in the best way possible. It’s been three weeks exactly since I arrived here in the sunshine state, and I don’t really understand why they call it that because it’s rained almost every single day I’ve been here. Personally, one of the biggest surprises was how quickly I made friends. One of the friends I had previously made at our Shark Preview weekend texted me the night we moved in and told me to go to a room right down the hall from mine. Thinking it was his room, I knocked and was taken aback when it was some random kid I had never seen before. All of a sudden I wondered if I had the wrong room, or if he had given me the wrong room. But then, the random kid says “Did he invite you too?” and then gestured for me to come in. Sure enough, my friend was lying on the floor, goofing around as usual. I introduced myself to this kid whose room I was now in, not knowing that over the next three weeks, we’d become the best of friends.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot of scattered fun with my newly found group of friends. When I say scattered, I use it to describe the most random fun I’ve ever had in my life. You’d be surprised as to how entertaining 2 am adventures to the nearest Wawa for smoothies can be. And you haven’t experienced a true movie night until you stay up until 4:30 am in the common room of the dorm making fun of horror movies. While we’ve had our share of fun times, we’ve also had a few scares over the past couple of weeks. Last Friday, several of us were hanging out when we were interrupted by the alarm on the intercom system they have installed in each of the dorm rooms. We weren’t exactly sure what had happened, all we knew is that the campus was on lockdown and we were to stay where we were. Then, of course, all of our group chats began to blow up, each with a different story explaining the situation. Some even threw around the term “active shooter,” this, of course, had us all extremely nervous. After about an hour and a half, we were given the all-clear, but there was no way we were going to sleep. Eventually, a mass email was sent out by the administration, and while the situation was horrible, it was not as dire as it was made out to seem, campus security took precautions and people were simply looking for an explanation and reassurance as it was occurring.

One of my favorite things about the campus community is that even those who I have not grown super close with yet will text and ask if I have a place to go, even offering a bed in their home if they’re local. We’ve all stayed connected within the different group chats, making sure everyone has a place to go or is at least safe on campus for the time being. There is a genuine concern that we have for our peers, even if we’ve not developed a definite relationship with them just yet, and I think that is super rare and significant to our campus life.

The most important factor within our friendship is the fact that we’ve already experienced so much together in such a short period of time. Both good and bad, these experiences have made our relationships stronger and I’m entirely grateful for the time we’ve had together so far, as well as for the times we will spend together in the future. I’m hopeful that this storm determines a path and passes quickly without enacting any serious damage, for the sole reason of returning to campus, getting back to my routine, and being reunited with all of my friends. I’m only three weeks into home, and I can’t wait to get back.

xoxo, Ash