Photo Courtesy of Sarah Forkin
I can remember back to July of 2021; sitting in my room, wondering how significantly my life would change in the years to follow, and how I could make that summer last forever. Only a few months prior to this existential day, I had graduated high school at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, feeling exhausted and forgotten. I did not have a normal high school graduation and normal high school prom, unlike my older and younger siblings,’ but no one would make a big deal of this as they did for the prior graduating class. My AP exams were not taken in person, and the SATs that I studied so hard for were waived by all of the schools I applied to, but for these I am grateful. Back to that night in July, I sat apprehensively wondering who my roommate would be and if I would still be close to my best friends of 17 years. Would I live through one of those dreaded horror stories of horrible roommates and a lack of friends? Would my classes be too hard for me and have me sent back home? I came up with a plethora of scenarios but none of which has described my time here at F&M.
Move-in day: August 28th, 2021. One car fully packed and only one person allowed to help with move-in due to lingering COVID precautions. My mom and I unpacked and decorated the cold, empty dorm room for hours until it felt as home-like as I thought it could get. I hugged my mom, tears falling down my face, and watched as she drove away, and prayed that graduation day would soon arrive. My drive from home wasn’t long, but the hole in my heart and the sinking feeling in my stomach felt bigger than they ever had. I sat on my bed, anxiously waiting to meet my roommate, beginning to spiral with fabricated stories yet again. How am I supposed to make a home when my mom wouldn’t be there to hold me when I am stressed or laugh at my long lists of stories? When would my best friends and I be able to talk again, when we are all being displaced in different places? All of a sudden, the kindest family burst through the doors with bags upon bags somehow working their way around the one-person rule. That night, my roommate and I stayed up talking and began our journey of making our home away from home. Together we learned how to adjust to classes, fight through frat flu, and balance hot and cold literally, as she was always cold and I was always hot. There was no more fear and only a room of two people unsure of what their time would look like; learning how to live this new life together as friends.
In our HA hall meeting, my fears of having no friends were quickly demolished when I met a guy who lived two doors down from me and would become one of my best friends. I met friends I had only seen on the F&M Class of 2025 Facebook and their roommates and their roommates’ friends. Friends that would become best friends and somewhere along the line become just friends again, but it would all happen so quickly that I would never really understand how. I took classes about “objects” and “the future” that none of my AP classes prepared me for, and I met people struggling just as much as me. I joined clubs that aligned with my passions, and I even became the president of the first club I ever joined! In the spring of freshman year, I joined a sorority, something I thought I would never do. I was matched with the best big in the whole world and our entire hectic but loving famline that came with her. A year later, I would be blessed with the sweetest little.
Photo Courtesy of Sarah Forkin
My big helped me navigate the importance of networking and gaining valuable experiences. As I learned more about myself and what I wanted to pursue in my future, I took a job as a student sports medicine assistant and started working directly with the F&M Football Team. As I learned to balance work and school, I would also learn how to balance the mental load that college presents us with. For example, something that no one but your anxiety can prepare you for is the housing lottery. Scrambling from my original plan, I would receive a text message from someone in my sorority who also needed a roommate. Little did I know, my sophomore-year roommate would become a friend that I hold very close to my heart.
Organic Chemistry would present me with the answer to the difficult questions I had asked God to answer: No more medical school for me. I would learn how to balance friend groups, relationships, school, clubs, and everything in between. I would become closer to my now best friends and roommates of two years. I would experience what it meant to be told, “I love you,” and later here, what it means to move on when your heart is in one place and your head is in another.
The arguably hardest year in college, junior year, came at me punching and kicking. I experienced the ups and downs of sharing a house with people I love and I gained communication skills with my best friends who I will take with me beyond college. My position as a Peer Health Educator would ignite a passion in me to fight for more universal education on health and wellness and would show me the very real statistics of what a lack of education drives others to do. I would declare an additional minor in Theatre, take leadership positions in 5 different clubs and organizations, and star in my first-ever F&M Theater production. Neuroscience showed me that we are all just trying to stay afloat and little by little if we help each other, we can get our heads above the water together. I would experience the bittersweet feeling of watching my darling little get her twins at reveal and the proud but distressing feeling of my big graduating and no longer having my mentor and best friend right by my side.
Now I sit here, in July of 2024, writing about my time at F&M and wondering how I can make it all go a little bit slower. I can look back and see how each of these memories has carefully and precisely, with the help of God, molded me into who I am today. All of my friends would call me an overachiever, but I would just call myself an appreciator of the little time we have to dive into all F&M has to offer. When you find yourself spiraling like I did three years ago, remind yourself of all the memories you are bound to make. Not all of the memories will have joyous feelings behind them, but I promise you that all of them will teach you priceless lessons. Class of 2028, you’re going for a ride. It may be different than mine, but we are all headed to the same destination of graduation and embarking on our journey into the real uncertain world. The ride I am on has had many ups and downs, love and heartbreak, success and defeat, closeness, and loneliness, and I am thankful to still have one last year to truly appreciate each and every bit of it. Take this as a sign to appreciate every moment a little longer, and cherish every good and bad moment knowing how it will become an important piece of who you are to become once you leave F&M forever.
With love,
A Senior with a Heart Full of Emotions
Senior Sarah Forkin is a Contributing Writer. Her email is sforkin@fandm.edu