I Am Waynesburg University

My friends are getting ready to leave.  I impatiently look out the glass doors, then wander out into winter.  It’s not as cold as it could be; from up here, I’d think the wind chill would be stronger.  I step into someone else’s footprints in the snow bank lining the wall and put my hands in the snow on the ledge.  I love when roofs and balconies serve as look out posts.

I see this town that I decided would be my next temporary home.  Why this town?  It’s ugly.  The dim yellow lights scattered throughout illuminate nothing that I care to see.  It’s tiny with nothing except the KKK and drug cartel (they do a good job of keeping it under wraps until you talk to the locals, don’t they?) and nothing for me.  It’s no different from the last town, except smaller and a bit closer knit.  What am I doing here when there is a whole world I can see? 

I look closer to where I’m standing.  From Stover’s balcony, I can see most of Waynesburg University’s campus.  Big, beautiful Miller that looks like a mansion.  Its roofs look good for climbing, but I haven’t found a way up there yet.  It’d be an even better look out post than here.  The GPAC, where events are held.  So much excitement happens there.  The Benedum, where I stuff my face.  Denny, the three story brick building with locks on every door, that keeps me the safest I’ve ever felt.  I don’t love living there.  There’s nothing really exciting about it, unless I climb out of my hole and wander the halls to find it (or make it).  Burns, where more fellow WU girls live.  Johnson’s Commons, the center of campus, with a big bronze colored lamp in the middle.  I’ve stood in its center so many times, looking at the sky to see if it’s going to be starry for me that night.

This campus and its buildings have good times, but this isn’t an amazing college.  As an institution, sure, it’s nice-but nothing amazing.  I feel like no paper work done by a secretary or degree given to me by an aged scholar can really make me feel like I didn’t waste my time staying in one, uninteresting place.

*

When I was in high school, the tour guides here told me that I should visit campus during the fall on a weekday because it’s a completely different place when the students are there.  Of course it is; the students are the college, like its cliche slogan “I am Waynesburg University”.  You are part of the population that makes this place.  Its buildings and its papers and certificates will never truly do a damn thing for any of us, besides educate us and get us a job in the future.  Here, we meet each other and inevitably share meals and bathrooms and jokes and opinions and stories and lives, on the grounds of one “University”.  We spend late nights in each others’ rooms talking about life before college (my life is split into “before WU” and “during WU”).  We read each other’s blogs to understand why we’re here, why we live, why we write.

 We all come here for a shared purpose.  These empty walls of bricks made by dispassionate hands surround rooms in which our minds are stretched in impossible directions and broadened to see things in different ways.  We came to occupy this campus, fill it, give it life; to become students and members of this awesome community.  To make this University a home, and a place worth coming to.

That's the only reason why I am here; to learn, to change, to grow into who I'm meant to be.  I'm greatly missing out on more interesting people in prettier places, but before I'm allowed to enjoy them, I need to complete this task; get my education certificate and English degree so I can teach them English as they teach me everything else I can't learn here.

College Is Like A Second Childhood

Stupid things are the best things to get excited about--the silly things you change your clothes for, invite friends to, and go to great lengths to get there.  My excitement for my Friday night plans put me on a happy high even through my three and a half hour shift washing revolting dishes in the cafeteria.   Working for the slave labor union is exhausting, time consuming, and always miserable, but serving and cleaning up after you pigs has its perks.  On my way out of work I inconspicuously grabbed a tray and continued on my way back to my dorm.  I then put on three pairs of pants, three pairs of socks, snow boots, three long sleeved shirts, a hoody, a coat, a fleece scarf and hat, and two pairs of gloves.  I grabbed my tray and joined my friend as we walked fifteen minutes from Denny Hall to Martin Hill. 

We watched as other students sped down the suicidal steep hill.  “He’s from California,” a boy said, as if it was an entirely perfect explanation as to why a boy was speeding first face into the parking lot.  My friend and I were handed a rug that someone took from Martin Hall.  “You can sit on it first…” she told me.  “Gee, thanks!”  I said as we got on it and I rolled up the front.  Someone gave us a push and I screamed as we soared down the hill on our magic carpet.  When we got to the bottom, we flew off our rug-sled and skidded until we were laughing on our backs in the parking lot. 

The hike back up the hill was more like a treacherous rock climb.  My friend took the rug for me and then stood at the top for ten minutes, cheering me on and instructing me on how to walk pigeon toed so I didn’t fall.  When we were finally both standing at the top, we watched as others tried tray-boarding and tray-skiing.  I looked around at everyone standing there.  I knew about five out of twenty or so kids, joking and laughing as we stood together, bored college students making our own fun; members of a community that I’ll be a part of for four short years, probably the last self-indulgent and merry-making years of youth that I’ll have.