First Days

Going to a woman's college, and one affiliated as it is with a world-class coeducational university, is as Romantic and lovely as I might have imagined. These past two-and-a-half weeks, time has begun to unveil for me the cast of characters of the next act of the Life and Times of Hannah Serena. I have retained some of my happiest memories from these short weeks but, because my camera has sadly been obsolete due to a missing battery charger, I fear that I have lost some other moments in passing and may only retrieve them, with the prompting of some sort of keyword, decades into the future. What I can remember is this:

A dance party at the Central Park Zoo. A toga party at a Columbia fraternity house. A fruit and chocolate crepe on the Low Library steps with all the other denizens of my Barnard dorm. A chance encounter with my old camp friend Jake on the Columbia pavilion. 3 AM delirium with my most favorite floormates under the soft midnight glare of ensconced lighting fixtures. Goofy adult mad-libs. Evening a cappella auditions that lasted for hours. The subway ride home from Magnolia, suspended in chocolate cupcakey bliss, as a new friend's nineteenth birthday faded away.

Mornings filled with French. Afternoons filled with studiousness and banana cake at the campus café. Nights filled with laughter, gossip, giddiness, and popcorn. Sleep filled with wooziness and finally, after all these years, ecstasy. I can't describe it quite - it's this sense of closure, that I'm finally learning what I want to learn, being with the people I deserve to be with and not the petty ones who have always tried to bring me down. I stroll around the halls and hear snippets of Korean, Arabic, Hindi; see colorful clothes tumbling through the neverending cycle of a front-load dryer. Style, sophistication, is everywhere, and confidence fills the air. The confidence is infectious, and all of a sudden I'm beginning to love myself.