Sara Does College

Insert here a long list of halfhearted apologies for being unfaithful, dear readers. I know, I’m in college now, I should be able to manage my time better.

Wait, WHAT?

OH YEAH, I’M IN COLLEGE NOW.

I go to a women’s college in the US, and from what I post here it will probably be very possible for any of you to find out exactly where I am within just a few Google searches. Please, though, I ask that if you don’t know me in person or through a friend (or, more likely, my mom, official Facebook blog pimp), to respect my privacy and leave the issue be. I promise all the hilarity of my college experiences will be relayed accurately EVEN if you can’t look up my dorm on Google Earth.

Seriously, please don’t look up my dorm on Google Earth.

So it’s been about three weeks since I’ve been here, and for those of you over the age over the age of 30 or under the age of 18, let me debunk some college myths for you:

• Doing laundry here is about as big of a deal as doing laundry at home. That is, not.
• I have only once so far eaten Ramen.
• And, EVEN at a women’s college, not all female college students are lesbians.

And now, let me confirm a few:

• Our college has its own bakery, so the Freshman Fifteen is a very real, VERY SCARY possibility.

• When students “take notes” on their laptops in class, they’re really just on Facebook or shopping online (But seriously! We can wear sweaters again!).
• And, really guys, the Freshman Fifteen. The food here is SO. GOOD.

There are some down-sides to this quasi-independence. For example, both my roommate and I are semi-afraid of bugs (when I say semi-afraid, I mean, I can deal with it if it moves slowly) and our third roommate, who is not a wimp, is not always around (or awake) to protect us. When a small cockroach crawled under our door a few weeks ago, my waking roommate screamed and I hurriedly  trapped it under a plastic cup. That proved to be not enough of a distance for either of us to actually brave taking it from the room, so we found a container to put over the cup, in the hopes that that would be enough.

It wasn’t.

We ended up covering the entire package in leftover Chinese homework so that we wouldn’t have to look at the bug if it moved around the container while we took it outside.

And, for extra measure, we taped the paper on the bottom upwards so that it had no chance to get out.

The whole ordeal would have been over a lot more quickly if my dad had been down the hall to wipe the bug away and leave me with only a semi-stained conscience.  But I’ll deal. There are, in fact, a extraordinary number of wonderful things about being here, and specifically at a women’s college. I feel a lot more comfortable experimenting with what kind of person I want to be (no, guys, not that kind of “experimenting”). I’m learning to create an identity for myself aside from the one I accumulated over sixteen years in the same place.

To a point, I think I was always under the impression that high school was just a structured, limited impression of “real life.” I thought I would always feel the way I did then, and grow in the same ways, and stay the same kind of person. But it’s not true. I feel myself growing not just up, but out, in all directions. And I’m learning to let go of (or chop off) little things I always thought defined me more than they did.

Like hair.

Okay. So maybe some of the women’s college stereotypes are true.

The silliness, however, will never change.