Contributing Writer
I’m almost halfway through my first-year and I feel like a complete pro. This time last year, I was applying to F&M and no one really told me what to expect here. Sure, I got the brochures, full of artificial smiles and an extreme focus on exciting, yet rare, events. I also read the reviews, tarnished by bitter transfers. So here’s the truth about what really happens here:
Senioritis doesn’t really go away.
When I developed senioritis in high school I was highly upset. I was one of those people who thought: “That would never happen to me. Lazy seniors.” And then … it happened. I had essays to write, Niccolo to read, and hundreds of stat problems. Every single day, I had to decide between reality television and such things as the Defenestration of Prague. Needless to say, the former won and I paid sincerely. Procrastination and an increased workload led to all-nighters and an overwhelming coffee load … and I hate coffee. But I had to drink loads of it in order to stay awake and I became an angry senior drinking horrible coffee. I never really got rid of senioritis. Maybe it’s become a superbug.
There are angry upperclassmen here.
Not everyone can afford the snazzy jazzy College Row apartments and not everyone who could afford them was lucky in the infamous lottery. And so they live amongst us in our College Houses and are forced to hide from the obnoxious first-years who ask for rides to WalMart. They reject our invitations to get milkshakes from Ben’s and, in an act of illogical defiance, still call ZeBi “Jazzman’s.” Get over it already.
Food is substituted for currency.
At a place where money is saved to pay P-Safe for lockouts, you’d better carry food at all times. Tutors, take note because we aren’t paying you in cash. Everything here is centered on food — mainly pizza. Common Hour events are full of the stuff and when a club is seeking new members, there’s food galore (at least for the first meeting; after that, they kind of stop being able to do that).
Mail becomes the highlight of your life.
When you’ve had a bad day, nothing cheers you up like getting mail and when you’ve had a good day, nothing tops it off more than getting mail. Mail makes the world go ’round. You go down into the mailroom (where you make a wrong turn towards the bathroom) and before you unlock your P.O. box you check to see if anything is there.
If you obviously have mail, you hurry and open your box to the joy that is in your possession and you get on with your life. If it’s not so obvious, then you take some time and you contemplate both fates: either you’re walking out of that room with mail or you’re walking out of that room with a sad, sad knowledge that no one cared enough to send you a letter. You open the box (has to be done eventually) and you see that you have to packages waiting to be picked up. Good for you.
Questions? Email Briona at bprice@fandm.edu.