As promised in my College Life Timeline post, I am going to post more about my experiences during college.

Before I go into too much detail about my first year at college there is a little bit you need to know about my childhood/adolescence… I lived a very sheltered life. I think I lived in a bubble. I was unaware of a lot of the things that happened in the lives of people outside of my family and close knit ward and neighborhood. Sure I knew drugs existed, and people went around having sex… but it was all stuff I’d just heard, and not really anything I thought of as being commonplace. I really was a bit of a Molly Mormon, but I didn’t really realize it. So, when I moved into my first college dorm it came as a HUGE SHOCK to me that there was life outside my little bubble and that it was vastly different from the little shelter in which I lived for so many years.

I was petrified. I remember calling my mom and telling her that I lived in Sodom and Gomorrah.

I was unprepared for the world… but I saw a lot and learned a lot rather quickly.

That being said, I am grateful for my good friend Jacqueline that came to Utah State and roomed with me. If it weren’t for her I think I would have gone insane, and maybe even dropped out of school.

I lived in Moen Hall (on campus apartments), where 6 girls shared an apartment – 2 to a room. Aside from Jacqueline, my 4 other roommates were Caroline, Beth, Lindsey, and Kate. Each brought their own “color” to the apartment… individually probably tolerable, but collectively – insanity! All of us were freshman. Here’s a brief introduction…

• Caroline was all about Frat parties and hanging out with drunk boys (she thought they were funny when drunk). She once had $20 stolen from her back pocket while dancing at one of these frat parties. She slept in all the time, and had all manner of strange boys (many high, or drunk) come over to the apartment. One even boasted to be on Acid. Besides Jacqueline, she was probably the easiest one to get along with and relate to.
• Beth was a member of the Kappa Delta sorority and was constantly doing things with them/for them. She would regularly spend the night at her boyfriend’s apartment – her bed wasn’t slept in for 3 months straight. She had another boyfriend back home that was leaving on a mission and was mad about the college boyfriend. She also had a stalker that sent her threatening mail and flattened her tires (among other things). She once had a ‘study’ group of very high boys come over. They tried to study, but spent most of their time laughing at anything and everything – apparently a common thing when you’re high. She decided at some point during the school year to get a tongue ring.
• Lindsey also had a tongue ring. She was from a little town in Idaho and had a high school boyfriend from that same town. He spent many a night in her bedroom with her (often leaving Caroline on the couch – she didn’t want to be in there) – the two often emerging in the morning with nothing but underwear on. This continued until about a month before he left on his mission.
• Kate moved in late in the year. She was a bishop’s daughter with bit of a rebellious side. She also spent many a night sleeping somewhere other than her bed. She pierced her belly button at some point during the year (and was scared to tell her mom). She had a boyfriend that she eventually ended up breaking up with. He came over a week or so later and found her talking to another boy in the apartment… he flipped out and started beating up the other kid – when she tried to intervene he pushed her against the wall. It took all of us ganging up to kick him out of the apartment.
• Also… 2 of our neighbor boys were gay, and the others were skaters who regularly displayed images of half-naked girls on their shirts or walls. A couple of them did tongue piercings too.

I remember sitting in my bedroom talking to Jacqueline and listening to all manner of fighting and yelling… or trying to sleep and knowing that drunk boys were in our apartment, or that some kind of hanky panky was going on in the next room, and that even when everyone finally went to bed no one ever bothered to close the front door.

The first few months were overwhelming and caused me to cry from time to time. I sometimes really missed my little bubble of a life and had a hard time imagining that THIS is what real life was all about. Over time I came to find some level of sanity among the chaos and actually sort of became friends with my roommates. When it was just us and no random strangers (or boyfriends) were around we all got along pretty nicely. Eventually I just learned that if I just accepted the fact that our night lives would be different and our choices of friends would be different that we could all live in some relative amount of harmony. Jacqueline and I just learned to lock our bedroom door (since the front door never was) and sleep through all manner of noise. We started making friends with some of the people upstairs and tried to keep ourselves separated for the majority of the drama. It worked. Mostly.
For a long time I wished that my freshman year in college would have been different – a little more calm perhaps. But I learned a lot that year about people, about decisions, and about the world in general (Only some of which I’ve touched on here)… that in some strangely twisted way it was good for me. It certainly helped me to look beyond the surface level of people and to relate better to what would be future friends and roommates.

I’ve grown a lot.