RevGal Friday 5: Dorm Life Edition

1) What was the hardest thing to leave behind when you went away to school for the first time?
The city.  I went from a large town/city (Colorado Springs) to a small rural town (Durango, CO) in the mountains.  For the most part I grew up in small rural towns but I had fallen in love with city life (don't laugh--the Springs was city-life to me!). 

My mom and I moved around a lot.  I went to 3 high schools in 4 years so there wasn't much to tie me down to any of them, nor the towns we had lived in.  I was excited and ready for college (so I thought). 

2) We live in the era of helicopter parents. How much fuss did your parents make when you first left home?
Not much.  It wasn't a big deal leaving home-- at the end of my junior year my mom moved to Colorado and left me in Manhattan, KS to complete the last few weeks/month of school.  Then my senior year she moved at semester to another town (she found some crazy old lady and her yappy little dog to live with and "watch over" me--not cool, not cool!).  So my momma left home before I did--twice!  No fuss there!

3) Share a favorite memory of living with schoolmates, whether in a dorm or other shared housing.

This was one of my favorite memories...KT, Megan, Katey (taking the photo), & I being total goofballs and doing the cliche girly thing--facials!  I think we danced around in our masks and everything.  We weren't sure if the mask cream was supposed to go on our lips or not.  Does that make Megan the smart one?

At finals Katey and I had a horrendous fight after watching New Jack City.  2 white girls in southwestern CO having an emotional knock-down over poverty, gangs, and racism.  Katey was from a wealthy family in Denver and let's just say I lived closer to the poverty line.  I ended up walking out and to Joel's apt. in my jammies, late at night, and with at least a foot of snow on the floor.  She called her dad, crying, saying that she was literally afraid that I might kill her.  It never occurred to me until I heard about that! 

The funny thing is that it was Katey's parents who helped me make it through college--they helped me pay for housing, bought me a car and kept it repaired, they adopted me and took me in.  Dave (her dad) grew up with a single mom (back when that wasn't ok at all) and wanted to help out because he knew how hard that road was.  Katey became one of my best friends and Merkin's "fairy god-mother."  Life is funny and wonderful.  Thank you Dave, I love and miss you!  Thank you Dave and Mary and Katey and Andy!

4) What absolute necessity of college life in your day would seem hilariously out-of-date now?
Word-processor!

5) What innovation of today do you wish had been part of your life in college?
Laptop computer of course!  Without internet--Facebook would have ruined my life! 

Bonus question for those whose college days feel like a long time ago: Share a rule or regulation that will seem funny now. Did you really follow it then?  I've never paid much attention to the rules.  ;)

Comments

Unknown said…
Seriously, as distractable as I am, I can't imagine getting through college with the Internet, though I did have it my last two years at seminary. But that was pre-Facebook, blogging, etc.
revkjarla said…
I love Durango. I think we talked about that before.....and what beautiful people to have stepped into your life and "adopted" you...
and I am glad you aren't a rule follower! ;-)
Cute photo!!
Unknown said…
Wow, great story! And how wonderful that you had your "adopted" family to help out :-) Yeah, Facebook would have done me in, too!
Robin said…
Love the photo! It reminded me of one night in boarding school, when we decided to try make-up, which we thought of as a hilarious and anti-feminist invention. I wish I had the photos; we actually looked quite beautiful. But in reality ... Well, let's just say that when my Choate-Wall St. lawyer cousin started talking about boarding school for his daughter and I suggested mine, and he looked at me in horror and said. "The girls there don't shave their legs!"

Great play.
Wendy said…
It doesn't take facebook. Very, very early internet (and other issues, of course, but we blame the computer) ended with one of my roommates not graduating.
Gosh, I forgot all about my typewriter (skipped the word processor altogether). I inherited my little brother's Apple 2Plus junior year when he went to Berkeley EECS and his graduation present was a brand new IBM PC. But by senior year it was crashing constantly so back to the typewriter till Christmas my first year of grad school when my parents got me an early Mac!
Jan said…
(I also went to three different high schools.)

Your picture and stories of college were fun!
A word processor beats a typewriter or by hand! Love the fcial pic...took me back. :-)

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