A Look Back: Eight Years Ago
21 Aug
Besides the insane amount of emotion I experienced on Wednesday while we moved my brother into his new place, I had a lot of flashbacks to my first time I set foot on the very same college campus and the months following…
* Sunday morning ritual. Fortunate to live in a small dorm my freshman year, the girls on our floor routinely hung out in the hallway every Sunday morning to recap the weekend’s event. Pajamas were welcome, we’d pass snacks around and eventually get our acts together to go to a dining hall en masse. (Side Note: I’m still friends with two of the girls today.)
* Public Transportation. I didn’t have my car with me for the first semester which was really no big deal since you don’t really need to leave campus for anything (at a school of 25,000 there are convenience stores, tanning beds, hair salons, food courts/dining halls galore and much much more) but occasionally my roomie and I felt the need to shop like any normal 18 year old girl. So we bravely tried our hand at the public transportation. We thought we had it mastered when one night, bags in hand, we found ourselves riding the through the “less safe,” part of town, the only two girls on the bus with a handful of very angry, disgruntled men staring at us. NO one was talking on the bus. It was pitch black out. We had no idea where we were. Finally we are dropped off at the bus depot which isn’t even close to campus. Bags in hand, we had to walk two miles home. We collapsed into laughter when our dorm room was finally in sight.
* Sorority Rush. I wound up pledging for only a short period of time due to some issues I had with the sorority president, their views on grades vs. being a sorority girl and a few other things but Rush isn’t an experience I would change for the world. I had a lot of laughs (as well as nerves, tears, and laughter) over Bid Day.
* Football Tailgating. I admit, I didn’t understand the attraction. Standing outside in the cold fall weather to eat and drink? Didn’t make sense. Something about the football game/stadium grew on me and before I knew it I was tailgating almost every home game possible unless of course there was a test to study for.
* Wearing flip-flops in the shower on a regular basis. So glad I don’t have to do that anymore.
* My first taste of beer. My first frat party. My first Homecoming (my college does it up right. Huge parades. Floats. Candy. Beer. Food. It’s an entire town event. Hotels & football game tickets sell out one year in advance!)
What’s one thing that stands out in your mind from your freshman year of college/first excursion away from home?
Oh my gosh, I LOVE this post. My first year was a lot of late night trips to Steak and Shake, hallway bowling, sleeping through biology, and being a “good girl” so my record was clean to study abroad. (Though I tasted my first beer at a dorm party on Halloween. My costume? Virgin. HAHA.)
Steak and Shake?! Now that’s what I’m talking about! Sounds like my kinda heaven.
One day I’m going to have to sit one of you American folk down and explain this whole Sorority fiasco to me!
Oh how I miss my college days. I mean, I am happy to be an adult with an income, but I do miss those simpler days of college!
I miss the Sunday morning re-hash of the previous night’s events. We usually did it at a McDonalds that had this crazy huge corner booth that we could all cram into. I miss living in a sorority (I was a Delta Gamma). I miss picking out classes! I love planning my schedule!
There’s lots of stuff I miss, but I’ll leave it at that. College was such a wonderful time of my life. It’s where I met all of my best friends and many other friends that I still keep in touch with.
Oh my gosh! I just want to sigh and dream about the US college experience, it’s NOTHING like that here lol
One of my best memories is of meeting Mister for the first time in my stage carpentry class and getting terrible butterflies. That was the start of good things!
My second year was actually a much better experience than my first year because by then I actually knew lots of people and my roommates. My second year of college was an absolute blast, though!
I can’t believe I’m entering my senior year of university. It makes me incredibly sad to think it will all be over in 9 months!!
All of those sound fun. My school is pretty much annoying because its super serious and competitive, we don’t have any greek systems here of course. And most kids who go to my law school are very serious so its not like they love hanging out, partying or exploring the town.
I get along with a few kids who are more like me. Freshmen year is spent hanging out after classes, go to clubs and even skipping out the class for a bit to just eat snacks and drink sodas in the hallway lol
Aww, so super cute! Loved reading this!
my college was in a very small midwestern town but it had the perfect 24 hour greasy spoon that we would go to after the bar for french fries and ranch dressing!
I remember thinking that people in my program did not look anything like people in college I’d seen on television.
This post reminds me so much of why I loved college. I loved our college town, and Ted and I often talk about how we would move back there in a heartbeat.
My favorite memory from freshman year is actually just walking around the Quad. Looking at all the old buildings and feeling like I was really in college was just amazing.
My senior year was my favorite year at college — we drank in the lounge (it was a dry campus), made a giant anatomically correct snowman (our dorm was Bonar Hall), threw pumpkins off the roof, had parties on the roof, played scrabble until 4 in the morning in the lobby. It was all round awesome.
I’m one of the rare few that HATED college. Especially freshman year. But I loved fall and the feeling of starting fresh with a new school year, a new semester. It must have carried over from my high school days.
My first time living away from my parents? I was eighteen, and I was just so excited the first time I paid my electric bill. I felt so grown up, haha!
I went to a community college my first year. Almost went to the Univ. of Tennessee, but changed my mind at the last minute. Sometimes, I wonder how it would’ve been living in the dorms, but I’m glad I skipped out of that… Otherwise, I wouldn’t have lived with Husband (then “Boyfriend/Fiance”) for a year before getting married.
Oh, the first days at Truman! The weirdest thing was meeting people who hadn’t gone K-12 with me and had no impression of me beyond what I gave them at age 18. Not that I was “teacher’s” pet when I was 11. Not that I dated a total d-bag when I was 14. I was a blank slate and it was AWESOMENESS.
This post inspired my blog post for today! I LOVED college, and reading your memories was fun!
Hope you are feeling better!