French, The Protestant Nunnery, & Why You Should Put Batteries in a Camera

Senior Year – 2003-2004.

Ah, the homestretch.

By now I’d had enough of living on Cornerstone’s campus, and this final roommate hunting experience turned out to be the more wonderful turn of events of my entire social life. Gloria, roommate from my Junior year, had two friends from the Honors Program who wanted to get an apartment a few miles from campus. I agreed to join in. Reluctantly. Confession: When I heard these two girls were from this Honors group, I admit I sucked in my breath a little bit. To my knowledge I didn’t know either of them, but I knew of this group. As freshmen, the Honors kids had been “those Honors kids” who we, as lofty sophomores, had been annoyed with because they were too loud, way too excited ,etc. But, Gloria had turned out to be likable and I’d had enough classes with a few from this group to know they were at least smart and interesting. Plus, Prof Burghart at one point randomly stopped me in that stairwell that always smelled like sweaty metal to discuss my writing, and he’d suggested that I get to know some of the Honors kids because he thought I might like them. Fortunately, that simple advice stuck. I sucked it up, crossed my fingers, and agreed to join Gloria and her friends, Rachel and Miranda, to live in the apartment.

For some reason, I was the first person to move into the apartment, which meant I went to the apartment complex’s office to sign the lease. The office lady knew of me and, justifiably believing I was aware of who I was living with, said, “Oh, you’re one of Brooke’s friends moving into the apartment above her! That should be fun.” I fake smiled with a chipper “Yes!” although I had no clue who Brooke was any more than I knew who Rachel or Miranda were. Anyway, I got the keys, and then my dad and brother suffered the joys of hauling my couch up three flights of stairs (this couch, years later, would be cathartically torn apart with hammers and steak knives by my enthusiastic father).

Rachel was the first roommate to move in with me. I greeted her, her face registered as someone I’d had classes with a few times (and, yes, she was one of those Honors kids), and we kinda ignored each other as we went about settling in. Which was reasonable. What was not reasonable was that for THE REST OF THE DAY we did not talk to each other but instead read books in different rooms until it was too dark and then we went to bed. To this day, neither of us knows why we didn’t talk.

Then came Miranda. Ah-ha, she looked vaguely familiar too! …Or at least the back of her head did from when she’d sat in the front of Religious Authors class the previous year. Again, however, little effort was put into getting to know each other for a while. (Which was incredibly stupid, considering we discovered A YEAR LATER that we’d both grown up in the same small town of Cedar Springs and had tons in common.)

Thus began two of my best friendships ever.

Despite the pathetic start, Gloria, Rachel, Miranda, and myself ended up getting along splendidly, which Gloria must have foreseen when she’d suggested the idea. Seriously, it is a major accomplishment to say that four girls living in an apartment and sharing one bathroom never fought.

Fun times:

Rachel liked to think she was an excellent matchmaker, which resulted in a white-board drawing of a game of M.A.S.H. with stick figures labeled with our initials and terrifying numbers of stick children.
Gloria and I for no clear reason once posed for pictures all night. One shows me afraid of a stuffed dragon which Gloria is about to save me from with nunchucks.
In a very tongue-in-cheek move, we nicknamed our apartment the Protestant Nunnery.

While I still wasn’t completely a part of their group, my three kind roommates grafted me into their circle of friends as much as both sides were willing, and I then came to know a few people I’d had multiple classes with over the years. All around, my Senior Year I bothered to get to know people, probably because I realized I was about to leave college with only a handful of friends to remain in contact with for the rest of my life. Fortunately I still had Becca, Adam, Aaron, and Pete from the year previous, so there were always people “my age” to hang out with between classes, after classes, and on many a “Fabulous Fluger Friday.” We swam in Pete’s parents’ pool. Becca’s family took us to dinner at Mongolian BBQ for her birthday. We for some reason watched Britney Spears music videos at Aaron’s. We played tons of euchre. Becca and I went to “Rent” which had Constantine, that guy who would later be on American Idol – he looked right at us too (insert fake swoon)! It was pretty good times.

Academically, I was also speaking up a bit more in class since I’d determined that I needed interaction – and, ahem, affirmation. But for some stupid reason I took 19 credits that first semester, which was a bit much considering I was trying to finish my first novel at the same time. (Hindsight: I wish I’d focused more on the book than ending college with a bang.)

French class in particular was enjoyable both semesters, and in a weird string of connections I ended up becoming friends with Christine, who turned out to be the wife of “Oh, that guy” who I’d had multiple classes with each semester. Christine and I struggled through the language together with ~~mediocre~~ little-to-no success, but it was great to stay after class and talk with the Prof for long periods of time about books, music, feminism, her time in France, etc. She even gave us books to divvy up between us at the end of the year. Christine and I never did learn to master the most difficult sentence we could come up with “I need a drink in the woods,” but it was fun. And I’m pretty sure we both passed with As, so our sucking up must have worked.

Media Literacy was of my final Communications classes for my minor. I was a little disappointed to discover that they’d pulled a switcheroo at the last minute and changed the prof to some new guy, but by the end of the first class period Prof Anderson had won me over – anyone who gets that excited about Disney is my kind of person. And while I’m sure he was only impressed with my writing because I was being read in comparison to my Communication major classmates (don’t get me started), I did appreciate his comments on my papers of “This is OUTSTANDING work – I want to help you get this published!” and “Call me, email me, we MUST do coffee!”

American Lit: Colonial with Prof Stevens once again resulted in numerous quotable quotes from the man. This class also solidified my hatred of Moby Dick. I mostly remember my new-found friends playing online quizzes and giggling all class period. And I’m still not sure how to take it that, when in one of my papers I mentioned being related to Emily Dickinson, Stevens wrote, “Why does this not surprise me?”

I’m not sure there is any way to explain Senior Seminar for English. I will say that I enjoyed my final paper on Flannery O’Connor, even if I basically gave my defense presentation from the position that I didn’t really like her writing. (I’m glad Prof Landrum agreed with me, even if Prof Stevens was aghast, which I think is unfair considering the whole time during my defense his kid ate French fries on his lap and stuck his tongue out at me.) Anyway, my main memories are of sitting around that table and listening to some of the dumbest conversations I’ve fortunately mostly forgotten. I kept no notes from that class. The one REALLY good thing I got out of it was that it finally forever solidified my friendship with “Oh, that guy,” the one I’d had Weight Training, Religious Authors, and many other classes with. Because he was in the group with my new circle of friends, I was fine by this point using his name “Buddy” in my head instead of “Oh, that guy.” But still we never spoke. We developed an odd understanding, though, and I don’t know what I would have done without him sitting across the table from me to receive my eye rolls and exchange looks of “What the hell is going on? How have we been praying for cats for 20 minutes?” etc. Telepathy would have been very handy, but you make do.

Then there was Editing and Proofreading, where I was the only person NOT on the school paper and I’m sure the Prof resented me for it. I may have rubbed it in an little bit, actually. I even wrote a paper on why I hadn’t done the job-shadowing assignment. After talking with my aunt Sharon’s friend Julie, who was an editor, I realized that living a life with a red pen was not for me. I got an A on that paper too, which is still funny to me.

Adolescent Lit was with another of Aunt Sharon’s friends from college – Prof Bell. Talk about going into a class with pressure. Since Becca, myself, and another guy named Denver (who was a part of my new friend circle) all had to study Moby Dick that same semester, we bonded in this equally-exasperating class. I remember Becca and I did some presentation where we showed a clip from “The Simpsons,” but I don’t remember why. I also remember we made Prof Bell cry because we defended that Harry Potter was not satanic.

Over the Christmas break we had J(anuary) Term, and Becca and I took Science Fiction class with Prof Landrum. This meant I was in heaven for about 2 weeks. Now that my 19-credit semester was behind me and I had a breezy 12-credit semester ahead of me, I set aside large chunks of time to finish The Kota, my first novel that I’d been fiddling with to that point. Being in Sci-Fi class helped sharpen my focus. We read Dune, Landrum sang the “Star Trek” theme, and we reminisced about the date and time that “Alf” had aired – I’m still impressed with that classmate who remembered where it fit in the NBC lineup in the 1990s. The fact that there were about 6 of us in the class was great, and for the first time I actually bothered to pipe up in discussions (the fact that sci-fi was my favorite genre didn’t hurt.)

Finally, there was Postmodernism. By this point I was happy calling “those honor kids” my friends, and most of them were in this class. Plus Blond Abraham Lincoln, whom none of us liked, and we had a rotating schedule of who had to sit next to him. The class was somehow fun, which I attribute to Prof Bonzo entirely. He at least had the good sense to let us read an impossibly complicated book in groups and then come up with questions for the next class period. My favorite was probably Buddy’s, “How does Derrida get any work done with Caputo’s lips fastened to his ass?”

Anyway, as my time as a college student came to an end, I finally published The Kota, which came as a surprise to my profs because I had NEVER bothered to even mention it. Becca had been suckered into writing on the school paper, and she wrote a very kind article about how I was publishing my first novel. Prof Stevens’ said, “Miss Somerville has always been an enigma, and I’m intrigued that she quietly wrote this full-length novel.” I’m pretty sure that this single-handedly earned me the 2004 English Award for Excellence. (Side note: At the chapel before graduation, Landrum, as the head of Humanities at the time, presented me with this award and presented the Communications Award for Excellence to Lydia, another classmate I’m gladly come to know by name. As we both stood on stage and received our $50 gift cards to Barnes & Noble, Lydia side-smile-whispered to me, “Did you know about this?” so that I side-smile-whispered, “Nope.” Apparently Landrum hadn’t bothered to tell us beforehand, but all the other division recipients had known.)

Then came graduation. I remember thinking now different this was from my high school graduation. I couldn’t wait to get away from ACS; I was sad to leave Cornerstone. I was happy with what I’d accomplished, and I was thrilled that God had brought me so far from the mess I’d been. Most of the ceremony is kind of a blur in my memory, but I did end up sitting next to Amber Smith, as we’d predicted would happen back as freshmen. And it’s only thanks to Gloria that I have any pictures from my graduation at all, because my parents forgot to charge the batteries in the camera.

I remember going back to my apartment after the open house that my family threw for me. I was the only one home, which was probably good. I remember just feeling…blank. I had no homework due tomorrow. I didn’t have to be anywhere until my internship started in a week. I’ve never been so hit with the feeling of being done. The unknown stretched before me for the first time in my life. It was kind of a relief, definitely terrifying.

Then my internship started in the media department at Cornerstone. This basically meant weeks of making phone calls and writing random articles for the website that didn’t seem to matter to me. There were some really wonderful “older people” who were willing to take the time to guide me in decisions for my future. By the end of the internship, though, I basically once again realized that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with a red pen. I didn’t want to work in an office, even if it had something vaguely to do with writing, editing, publishing, etc. I had become, somewhere along the way, too creative to find that fulfilling. I’d gotten a degree for my hobby.

So, after my internship was over and I officially had my diploma, I took a year off to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It helped that all my roommates were still in college for another year, so I didn’t have a complete cutoff from all the wonderful things of college that I’d discovered. This included my friends, and I now had the free time to get to know them better. We got much closer, and I remember sitting in a room with Rachel, Miranda, Gloria, Brooke, Buddy, Christine, Denver, Chris, Andrew, Randy (Burghart), and a few other people and thinking for the first time in my life, “I like everyone in this room.” That still touches me as an incredibly good moment, and it was then that I realized God had finally brought me to a place and to a people that fit.

February 25, 2013 5

Red Walls, Landrum, and Why I Love Eminem

Junior Year – 2002-2003.

My roommate situation Junior Year at Cornerstone proved to be a phenomenal turning point. Mita (from the year before, you remember, who made excellent dumplings) and I needed a place to live now that Elise had decided to brave the life of a commuter. So in one of those friend-of-a-friend moves, we signed up to live with Bobbi and her friend Gloria. Bobbi had lived across the hall from me Freshmen Year. I was told Gloria was on the track team. That was all I knew. Well, that and Bobbi’s assurance that “Gloria is cool.”

My first day back on campus, I took a small load up to our apartment in Babcock and dodged the others moving in. Walking into our apartment, I found this 5-foot-plus-few-inches girl with long hair, Gloria, sitting at her computer. She turned and asked if I needed help. My immediate response to this question is always “no,” but I figured if she was willing it might be a good way to get to know each other. So, Gloria walked with me back to my car to get the next load. Then something happened that bonded us instantly. A guy I knew from the years before had parked near me and started unloading, and he commenced chatting away at me so that I went into my obvious (at least I think obvious) humoring voice that also is meant to imply I’m not interested. With one sympathetic glance from Gloria, I knew we were going to be friends.

Gloria, Bobbi, Mita, and I got along extremely well. We were all a little bit country, a little bit rock-n’-roll, funny, and not above being a little nuts from time to time to let off steam. Bobbi came up with the idea of painting plastic bright red and hanging it all around the living/dining room, and I’m told people in the parking lot looked through our windows and thought we were Goth and angry all the time. Mita and I would often pretend to be napping rather than answer the door when a certain visitor came a-callin’. Gloria once came up behind me in the student union and asked if I would help her get lunch; I turned around in confusion and found her to have both her arms in slings from a pole vaulting attempt gone horribly wrong (this may have been the next year, actually, but I can’t remember – the girl got injured almost as often as me, which was another bonding point).

So, yeah, good roommates = check. Elsewhere, I was also finally realizing that I kinda liked people. But by now, the normal people had all established their friend circles, and I realized I didn’t really have one, largely because I seemed to have a talent for befriending people who transferred out. Then, on one of the first days of 20^th Century British Lit, I sat by one of Elise’s friends that I knew but for whatever reason we’d never been close friends before. Thus entered Becca. She invited me to lunch, and I soon found myself with Becca, Pete, Adam, and Aaron. They adopted me, lost puppy that I was. These were also really the only people in my own year that I was friends with, because along with my ability to befriend transfers I also through Gloria knew her sophomore friends (more on that later).

Odd things I remember:

Becca – Mostly I just remember sitting around in the student union between classes, goofing around or helping each other with English homework. Ours was just an easy friendship, which was a relief. But we did have really good talks too, and I remember one in particular where we discussed how we needed deeper connections on spiritual grounds with people in our lives. Immediately after this, Pete came up and asked if we’d seen some TV show the night before, and Becca and I both rolled our eyes but broke out laughing.
Pete – dragged us to at least one Shane & Shane concert, and I witnessed my first platonic man-on-man crush. Pete was a goofball but could also switch gears in an instant to help people, which I always admired.
Aaron – We once were left in the student union for like 3 hours between classes, he doing homework on something about fish and me working on a paper for Stevens. I’m not sure we actually spoke until Aaron wanted me to go help him pick out Thank You Cards in the bookstore. To my surprise, he picked very flowery ones. (I really don’t know why I remember this.)
Adam – Okay. I took this group up to the Haymarsh for an outdoorsy field trip during the spring, as Adam and Aaron were both very into environmental biology. Driving my dad’s truck out in the back 900 acres somewhere, I should have known better than to drive through a soggy area – HayMARSH, after all. I got the truck stuck. More in annoyance than embarrassment (shame on me), I left my friends in the truck and went to chase down my dad, who was on the tractor not far away. As this was my first ever “Are ya busy?” (code in our family for being stuck and needing help) I was kinda amused with myself, and Dad laughed and drove the tractor to pull out his own truck where I had lodged it in knee-deep mud. I, assuming Adam knew what he was doing, left Adam behind the wheel while I helped Dad hook the truck to the tractor. Dad pulled and pulled on the tractor while I assumed Adam was in the truck trying to steer it out. Once the truck finally got free, turns out Adam had left it in park the entire time.

Back in the classrooms, I was still enjoying myself and gobbling up all I could. I had a lot of Prof. Landrum that year. He was probably my favorite professor because he flat out said that he didn’t care what grades we got, that the main point was that we get something out of it, and that that was up to us. He had a very lecture-style of teaching, and it reminded me of Mr. T back in high school. He was also the most eclectic of the profs I had, so that didn’t hurt. Anyway, I had Landrum for Shakespeare (we watched many movies), 16^th Century Brit Lit, Literary Criticism (where people on either side of me played solitaire on their laptops the entire time), 20^th Century Brit Lit, and he was one of the three profs for Love & Friendship (sort of like a real class except that the profs clearly got bored and wandered in and out of the room to get handfuls of cookies from the office across the hall). I also had Christian Theology with Duff, American Lit with Stevens (“Does it scare anyone that I have scissors in my pockets?”), Public Speaking (in which I got an A+ for a speech on my name, thanks parents), and a few others that I’ve mostly forgotten.

Academically, I started to realize that, whether I tried or not, I was still a pretty good student and was going to get noticed for it. Classmates wanted help with their papers; profs clearly remembered who I was outside the classroom and sometimes even told me on the sidewalk that they’d liked my last paper. So on the one hand – oops, guess I couldn’t avoid the Golden Child problem entirely. On the other hand – affirmation is a nice thing. It definitely encouraged me that I actually could write after all. It wasn’t just something I liked doing; maybe I was actually good at it. (Although I still think Stevens missed the point of my “extremely good” anti-Fussell poem that he HANDED OUT TO OTHER CLASSES, but that’s a whole other thing.)

Because of this boost, I started to seriously start working on my hobby project – The Kota Series. It’s not a coincidence that my journal entries significantly dropped off during this time, for all my free-time writing now shifted to The Kota. (Brief explanation: The Kota is a sci-fi story that my brother and our friends Kaly and Luke made up when we were little and played every day. Over the years, it had grown into a short-ish story of 4 “books” that I’d written based off of what we’d played. Now, I started to flesh them out with the goal of making them real books at some point. I was never aiming for “ooh, I want to be a big published author” or anything. I just wanted this story that had meant something to me for over a decade to actually be in print, in book form that I could have forever.) I don’t think that I told anyone other than my roommates what I was doing cooped up behind my laptop all the time, but I’d finally found my creative release and kinda dove into it during this time.

Then “8 Mile” came out. I connect crap all over the place anyway, but “Lose Yourself” really hit home with me as I was branching out in my own creative project, and the song felt like a kick in the butt so that I decided I was actually going to publish this thing. For that, I will forever be thankful to Eminem.

Anyway, the rest of Junior Year for some reason is a blur, probably because I actually enjoyed myself but I was still in a place where I only held onto the bad times (baby steps…). But really, by this point, I was pretty happy. I liked my friends (a new concept, but delightful). I liked school (and the renewed affirmation). And I had my own thing that I could work on in the background, smirking and scribbling down notes for my book whenever something inspired me.

February 18, 2013 2

Old Country Buffet, Candle Lights, and Why It’s Good to Talk to Classmates

Sophomore Year — 2001-2002.

8-8-2001 So I think I’ve figured out that I have no happiness in my life. I was listening to the song that says, “I don’t know where my soul is. I don’t know where my home is. I’m like a bird, I wanna fly away.” Because of my extensive time with pheasants, I can picture a bird as some kind of symbol for my life. I think that it would really help me if I could catch that stupid shimmering bird of happiness. I don’t know where my bird is, though. I don’t know where I will feel like I belong. I’m getting close to the point in my life when I need to either change or turn to gluttony for comfort. I need that bird, I just don’t know entirely what it is or where I can find it.

8-26-2001 I recently had another one of those moments when everything that’s been jumbling through my head makes sense.
It has been really humid and hot lately. I mean, really humid and hot. I remember when we were in Las Vegas a man was complaining about the 20% humidity that day. Being from Michigan, I don’t complain until the humidity percentage reaches the upper 90s, and today the heat index was 106. It honestly hadn’t rained in a little over a month until two days ago, and everything has been horrid. The humidity (here’s where my point comes in, by the way) was so bad that it clouded everything in this grayish blue haze. I’d stopped noticing it because it had covered everything for so long. I could look out my window and not be able to see the tree line behind our fields because of the haze. Anyway, after the rain the humidity dropped, and everything looked different. More real. The colors returned, and I could once again see the distinct leaves instead of a grayish blur.
Along with this clearing, I had one of those old feelings again. I was sitting in church, listening to the sermon, when everything just engulfed me and I felt alive again. The thing was, I really hadn’t seen before that I was in that deep of a funk. I just sat there, in church, thinking things over as usual when I found tears forming for no explainable reason. Something in the sermon did trigger it all, although now I can’t think of it…something about prayer, and I thought suddenly how little it seemed to matter lately. That started my upward spiral. I can’t really explain it, but I know it’s happened before. I get stuck in a slump and God picks me up and I’m back on my feet again, ready to get back to life. I wish I could say that I’ll stay awake this time, but I know myself better than that. I can try, though.
I have so much inside of me that I chew over, and I don’t know what to do with it. There are very few people whom I feel connected to enough to talk about certain things. I think a large part of my personality doesn’t want me to talk about certain things because they are mine. I have this horrible control thing. But I’ve been kicking myself lately because I know there is something wrong with me but I don’t know how to fix it or if I even want to. It suddenly came to me that I probably should sort through the fog and figure this out, though.
I’m not entirely sure why I saw the connections between this and the humidity so strongly. Timing, I think. The mind-numbing shroud being lifted, certainly. I don’t know, I think that humidity is a weird enough metaphor for me that I’ll remember what I’m talking about.

Sophomore Year was when I really started figuring out what I wanted out of life. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do vocationally, but I was gradually learning that I could do anything and still be happy as long as I had some fulfilling creative outlet. Or maybe this was just what I told myself to survive my job at Old Country Buffet.

Here’s how that happened. The head manager of the OCB in Grand Rapids was a member of the Haymarsh Hunt Club, so my grandfather took it upon himself to use his connections and get me a job there, even though I said I’d be perfectly content working on campus. (He ignored this, not surprisingly.) We met for lunch at OCB, I had an interview which basically consisted of my Gpa and this guy talking hunting, and then I was hired. I’m pretty sure the fact that I spoke English was all that was required, and I ended up being the cashier/hostess. Pretty much all the other employees were Romanian, and I had the privilege of being exposed to a new culture and was even given permission to say “ciao” for the rest of my life. These genuinely likable coworkers were the highlight, because most of the English-speaking manager guys were kinda off/terrible/jerks in one way or another. And I still can’t stand the smell of frying chicken. It lasted 6 months. Maybe.

But back on campus, I was actually starting to enjoy myself. My freshmen roommate, Elise, and I moved over to the apartments on the other side of campus, and joining us now were Melody and Mita. Being in an apartment instead of a dorm room was lovely, as was having the ability to choose our roommates (as opposed to our nightmare suite-mates the year before). For some reason we decided to cram all four beds into one bedroom, and we stayed up many nights giggling and talking. It was really quite nice living with girls who were less tomboyish than myself, and I felt like I was catching up on what I’d missed all these years.

A few memories:

One night we each shared stories of the worst things we’d done as kids. I don’t remember the rest of our stories, but innocent Mita told hers. “My siblings and I snuck out of the house, went down to the river, and went fishing…” Elise, Melody, and I all waited for the big reveal. Then we realized this was the end and burst out laughing.
On 9-11, we were having a class meeting when our class president rolled a big screen TV into the room. We sat and watched the news as the second plane crashed. Later that day, I remember everyone panicked and went to fill up their gas tanks before prices skyrocketed. I stayed in our apartment and painted. I don’t know why this calmed me down, but it did.
Candle Lights. Whenever someone would get engaged, it meant a ~~stupid~~ wonderful Cornerstone tradition where girls would run and squeal down the halls, banging on everyone’s doors so that we had to get up and go to the lounge area. However late it was, you were expected to attend, which did not result in a good attitude on my part. We would sit around in a circle, and a candle would be passed around the circle until it got to whichever girl had gotten engaged. She would then blow out the candle; more excited squealing followed. As I rarely knew the girls who got engaged, I viewed this whole thing as an intrusion on my sleeping patterns. I’m a hopeless romantic, I know.
For some reason, Cornerstone held fire safety drills/meetings at least twice a month (maybe not, but it felt like it.) One such meeting was held in a building a whole 100 yards from our apartment building, so Elise drove us. Everyone was a little slap-happy and annoyed with the meeting, and it was very late by the time we poured out of the building to return home. Elise drove back to our apartment behind a van full of boys, one of whom (I know who you are) decided to moon us. Elise COVERED HER EYES, so we jumped for the wheel before crashing as she continued to accelerate.
Then there was Smelly Guy, who always wore too much cologne and we somehow always ended up in the stairwell at the same time.
And of course I’m not likely to ever forget the time Andria, the girl who lived across the hall from us, screamed with so much obvious pain that I ran out into the hall to discover she’d chopped the tip of her finger off in the doorway.

Classes during this year were pretty great too, since I was mostly done with the general requirements and could steer more into my own interests. World Lit with “The Fab” allowed me to write a paper on Sci-Fi, which thrilled me not in a small part because I got to pick first and grabbed it before any of the guys could. There also was some group presentation we had to do about Oedipus, and my group performed a dramatization out the window as if it was a TV screen, me jumping off a ladder as Jocasta and Derek smearing his eyes with a gory mix of red dye and peanut butter while screaming, “Oh, my gods!” Intro to Fine Arts was again with Burghart and meant looking at more cool art stuff. Intro to Philosophy was with Bonzo. I kinda half-assed that class and got a B+ because I was annoyed with the philosophy students who clearly thought they were all brilliant (apologies to those of you who are now my friends.)

But here’s the funny thing about my classes in the second semester: I had at least 3 classes with a guy I never talked to. We would go from Weight Training in the morning immediately to Religious Authors, and either I would follow him or he would follow me all the way from one building to the other. As time went on and we had more and more classes together, I realized that this guy and I probably had a lot in common. He spoke in class enough for me to realize he was pretty smart, which quite frankly was the kind of person I needed at this point. But we never spoke, and looking back (now that we’re good friends) it seems ridiculous to both of us. Had I bothered, it might have led to my introduction to my current group of friends much sooner, but without time-travel (and wouldn’t that be handy?) I guess there’s no point thinking about it.

Anyway, classes and friends and jobs and life in general opened me up this Sophomore Year. I learned about the Dalai Lama, Wendell Berry, more holocaust literature than I’d ever planned on reading, and Li-Young Lee. And although I still feel bad about lying so obviously when Stephens, my Creative Writing prof, asked if the class had helped me with my own writing, maybe it did and I just wasn’t aware of it yet – learning what doesn’t work for me is useful too, I suppose. At any rate, this year brought me a little closer to figuring out what I wanted.

10-3-2001 When I was under five feet tall, I remember running through the woods on my stick legs and not caring about the scratch marks I received that would leave scars which would stick around for years to come. My hair, which I rarely bothered to brush, would flow down my back during the few times when I was able to escape the house before my mom could put it up in pigtails. Life was so simple then.
I remember one particularly wild run through the woods vividly. I was wearing my favorite blue T-shirt that of course had the most holes of any shirt I owned, and I was barefoot, running along the unfinished berm on the front of our house. (Dad had assured mom that he would finish the berm within the first week after we moved in; it remained unfinished so long that Mom had quite forgotten about it and it was my favorite shortcut to run into the house.) As I was skipping along, I remember thinking that I would get serious and become a girl once I hit sixteen. I would wear pink, put ribbons in my hair, have a boyfriend, and be popular with the cool girls. I also had this thing about changing my name to Erin, but that’s not important. It seemed so far off, so I think I was comfortable with this resolution. When I was sixteen, I would settle down.
Well, needless to say, not much of this happened. Okay, none of it happened. But I remember how important it seemed that I do these things by the time I was sixteen. I can’t figure out why all of this suddenly flashed into my mind today as I was walking back from bombing a psychology quiz, but it did. I think it’s because I have to start deciding what I want to do with my life, and it’s a little more serious than the color pink, ribbons, boyfriends, and being popular. What AM I to do? What do I even want? I didn’t want those things that I did when I was under five feet tall, and that’s probably why I never attained any of those “lofty” goals.
So what do I want? Before I die, I want to have seen a little of the world outside my bubble. I want to see the British islands my family is from, Egypt, Asia, Rio de Janeiro. I want my own bit of earth. I want to find someone who makes vulnerability not a thing igniting in me complete terror. I want to have found a haircut I actually enjoy for two days in a row. I want to own at least two dogs. I want to come up with a short explanation for why I am the way I am. I need something that is my own that no one else can get to, something that makes me smirk like “I know something other people don’t,” as I was told the other day.
I have been to Las Vegas, San Antonio, Orlando, Branson, Daytona, Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head, Chicago, Mackinaw Island. I have seen the Mammoth Caves, Grand Canyon, both Oceans, sunsets over Lake Michigan. I have hiked the mountains of West Virginia, played in Tahquamenon Falls, climbed the dunes of Silver Lake, walked the circuits of Disney World and Gettysburg. I have seen twisters, storms at sea, meteor showers, aurora borealis. I have friends whom I have known since birth, and I will have friends whom I haven’t met yet. I have created paintings, crafts, stories, and my share of joy and pain. I have problems, concerns, frustrations, tears, and grievances. I don’t know what to do with my life. I don’t know what to make of Spring, Winter, and the unusual Michigan changes in between. I have seen 20 winters of gently and not so gently falling snow.

February 13, 2013 6

Nessie, Scat, & The Freshmen Frenzy

It’s safe to say that I knew I was a mess when I entered college. I hadn’t sorted it all out yet, but I at least knew that making other people happy could not be my focus anymore. So, I basically entered Cornerstone University with the single goal to go unnoticed. I didn’t want to shine, I didn’t want to work so hard to excel, I didn’t want the professors to expect me to get A’s. (I know… #goldenchildproblems) And I certainly didn’t want my peers to look up to me or rely on me. I needed ‘me time. (It’s interesting now to look back on my journal entries during this time and trace my growth/healing, so I’ll include some as I go along below.)

Also, I knew that I wanted to see more than what I’d been exposed to in high school. I needed a wider range of humanity. I’d always been eclectic in my interests without the resources to explore them, and now in college I was thrilled to have academic guidance in my pursuits. (Not that Cornerstone was a widely diverse world, but it was better than where I’d come from.) I remember feeling so relieved that I could now learn in a richer soil. And, since I had nowhere near enough personal stability to know what I wanted to do vocationally, I decided to get a degree for my hobby. Thus, I decided on an English Literature major, and I set forth to gobble up all I could. And maybe try to enjoy myself.

Freshmen Year – 2000-2001. I remember meeting my roommate, Elise, for the first time. We both realized instantly, I think, that they’d put us together because we both had listed Art as one of our interests. This was clear mostly because on paper we had so little else in common. But we bonded at the very least because we were both equally baffled by our suite-mates – one turned out to be a pathological liar/thief, the other had no boundaries and cleaned out our frig on a regular basis, among other things. But Elise was a godsend, really. She was emotionally stable (certainly by comparison to yours truly), she was kind, she was sweet, and quite frankly she was such a contrast to myself that she made me a better person. It was also interesting that my high school English teacher, Michaele, knew Elise from when they worked at camp together, and Michaele had sort of followed me to Cornerstone to work there. This helped Elise and I because we had a very welcome third-wheel at lunch. Although, I still don’t understand Michaele’s preferred meal of peas and cottage cheese mixed into her salads.

Adventures of Elise and myself:

Coming up with a story that Nessie (the Loch Ness Monster) lived in Cornerstone’s shallow pond and ate regularly sacrificed students.
Covering our walls in plastic so we could paint them.
Going to bed by 9 after we’d finished homework.
Naming our pet fish “Discernment,” which was one of the buzz words at school. We later had to give Discernment medicine (and later burial) after our suitemate decided to pet the fish and gave it a fungus.

Living in a dorm with several hundred classmates was definitely a whole new world – I’d just left a senior class of 11, after all. The first thing that hit me about these people as we settled in was how annoyingly Christian-y they were. Apparently the fact that we’d entered a Christian university meant that everyone was trying to prove their faith or fit in or something, but I found it obnoxious considering I’d come from a Christian high school where you kinda just learned to incorporate religion/faith into the everyday. Or, maybe it was just that this was the first time many of them had been able to live in a Christian community like this. Either way, it settled down after a couple of weeks, much to my relief. What did not settle down was the “Freshmen Frenzy” – the instant drive everyone seemed to have to find “the one.” I, knowing that I was a mess and needed to be alone and sort myself out, was constantly surrounded by silly girls who fluttered over boys. And the boys fluttered back. I grew incredibly sick of hearing the campus mantra of “if it’s God’s will” – which I like to believe God hates as much as I do. I find it hard to believe that God is a Holy Matchmaker with nothing better to do. Anyway, I kept my head down and once again realized I was a magnet for freaks, but more on that later.

Rock groups were Cornerstone’s way of trying to help us make friends. I don’t remember what sorting system they used (it was not a magic hat), but basically groups of 8-10 (?) were clumped together and taken through the tours, etc. so that we were supposed to bond. Figuring I had to have some friends, I went along with my suite-mate (not yet knowing about the pathological behavior) and joined Rob, Tim, Amber, and some others. We were an odd mix of characters, but I truly did like them. I remember very quickly Amber and I realized that we would be sitting next to each other come graduation because of our last names, and this did end up happening, even if we weren’t close friends by the time of graduation. And something our Rock group did that I’m not sure others did was that we took turns going to each other’s homes on the weekends. On Rob’s weekend, I remember lying around, laughing with these people, and thinking, “Huh, maybe I like people after all.” It wasn’t much, but it was a step in the healing process and meant a lot to me.

10-23-2000 –I recently went to one of my friend’s houses for a short weekend getaway. “We” being two guys and three girls, it probably looked a little interesting. We went to visit his great grandmother for an hour, and we were all amazed that she acted like us. The first comment out of this elderly woman’s mouth was, “Wow, you sure have quite the harem, Rob.” We stood dumbfounded as she went on to discuss underwear, my friend’s girlfriend, and various other subjects which are usually not discussed with great grandparents…or parents, for that matter. Sure there was also a conversation about digestion problems, but it was incredible how she connected with us.

There were ups and downs as I progressed with this new life.

10-29-2000 I think I’ve begun to come back around to myself. I don’t yet fully grasp were I went. I got lost. I was numb, but I feel like I’m awake now. I have this tingling sensation like (I can’t believe I’m about to use this analogy) a hunting dog who’s about to be released into a field. That’s really the best way to describe my interior right now; I’m shivering with anticipation.
It’s weird to look back on myself over the past few months. I can remember coming home to the Haymarsh the first time and only wanting to get back to “civilization” as soon as possible. Maybe that’s the whole “you can’t go home again” thing. I don’t know. Now, as I lay on my bed in the dark like I always used to do, I realize what a little shit I was.
Now, I’m trying to listen to that little voice that, when I said, “I hate my life,” told me, “well, change it then.”

1-13-2001 I’ve heard it said that we all should get rid of perfectionism because you miss out in a lot of life. Messes are supposedly signs of life. I think it is because of this theory that I am sitting in the perfect spot on my bed. (You know how you are supposed to not always lay in the same spot in your bed so one area doesn’t get worn out? Well, I’m being defiant and laying there. Pretty gutsy, huh?)
One thing I don’t understand about myself is why I don’t let myself have fun. I avoid social gatherings of any kind. I don’t go to friends’ parties, even when they actually do think to invite me. I don’t even allow myself to enjoy any one person’s company because I constantly tell myself that they will turn on me at the nearest opportunity.
I think part of the whole self-pity phase (God, let it be a phase) involves analyzing yourself to death. Analyzing is one of my strong suits. I can easily identify why my life sucks. I’m analytical, so I read into everything. I’m a perfectionist (which I already covered) and organized. I’m self-conscious, so I never draw attention to myself on purpose. I have no self-esteem, but I also manage to be incredibly arrogant and vain at the same time. I have an “inferiority complex about my superiority complex.” I’m defensive to the teeth. I’m terrified to enjoy myself because I think I will get hurt by someone sometime. All in all, I’ve decided that I’m a snotty, defensive screw-up. I have this mix of apathetic aggression and downright mourning that I can’t explain.

So, yeah. All that was going on.

Of course, my main focus was on learning in college – weird, I know. The freshmen class that sticks most in my memory is “Foundations of Scientific Inquiry,” which I’m sure seemed like a great idea to some administrative head at the time but which came to be known as “Foundations of Scientific Purgatory.” Basically the semester was divided into 3 sections with 3 different professors of 3 different science classes. I’m not really sure I learned anything, but I definitely remember the assignment when we were put in groups and had to compete by finding the fastest way to melt an ice cube. As soon as the prof started the timer, Jeff D. acted decisively for our group by popping the ice in his mouth, crunching away, and then opening his mouth and proclaiming, “Done!” We won, even if this wasn’t exactly with the prof had intended. (Years later, my brother, knowing this story, did the same for his group when he was in this class.)

But there were good classes too. “Intro to Literature” was probably my favorite, and Ms. Eckman was probably my favorite prof that year. I did, however, nearly get sucked back into being a golden child because my class was full of Business majors (the horror!) and I was one of the few actually interested in literature. Or there was “World Civilizations 1” where Prof Cole delighted in singing some song with my name in it practically every morning – loving history as I did, I forgave him. There was also “Intro to Biology,” where Prof “Gator” would regularly talk about scat. I again was something of a golden child in this class, especially in the section about wetlands – living on the Haymarsh back home had its advantages. When asked on a field trip, “What do you call dead meat?” I happily answered, “Carrion!” and got a gold star for the day.

5-17-2001 Just when I think life can’t possibly become any funnier, God finds a way to slip something slimy under the covers. We went on a field trip for Bio Lab to the sand dunes, and I was walking with a guy whom I’ve spoken with many times. He remembered that I am an outdoor freak, and he asked me if I had learned anything in the class. I said not really, because we were studying wetlands and I live on a wetland. He asked where. I said Morley. He was surprised and said he was from Lakeview. I said really. He asked if I knew where the Haymarsh Hunt Club was. I said that was me. He asked if I knew Lee Clemence. I said he was my uncle. He said really. I asked how he knew my uncle. He said he used to work for Gummer Peat Company. Very strange; you never know who you’re going to run into.

And there was “Religious Communities and Cultures” with Prof Burghart. This class probably meant the most to me, although I might not have been aware of its effects at the time. Randy (Burghart) clearly wasn’t any more thrilled with the assigned, massive text than we were. And since there were only about 10 of us in the class, he moved us from the stifling classroom above the library into the student union, where we could sit on couches. Basically, all I remember is Randy showing us slide after slide of different art pieces on his laptop. I did take notes, so we must have been tested on something. But mostly I remember feeling incredibly relieved to just sit back on the couch, let go of some of my neuroses, and listen to Randy tell us about art for an hour. Although I didn’t know it at the time, Randy would be a influence on my later choice of a friend circle as well. Not that Steve, who was in this class with me and wrote “Poophead” and “Steve G. is my hero” on my notes, stuck around for long.

All in all, my freshmen year of college was an interesting start. I started dipping my toes in various interests, learning about new options. I healed just enough to enjoy the change. And while my friendships from Freshmen year didn’t end up really sticking much, they prepared me for the ones to come.

February 8, 2013 0

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