Dorm Stories: Fall Semester

I am splitting this post in twain, due to length. The second “semester” (I am so clever) will arrive in a day or two. I feel you deserve the warning if you want to consume this all at once.

It was almost exactly twenty years ago that I moved out of Meredith Hall. I’d have to research to come up with the exact day, but I know it was in May of 2006—close enough to call it twenty years in my book.

Meredith Hall was my first home away from home: where I lived my freshman year at Purdue. One of the great joys of college is the semi-autonomy it provides. There are no adults telling you when or what to eat. It’s entirely up to you if you want to keep your room clean or even shower (please shower, come on). Your schedule, knowing when and where your classes are and what times you ought to leave, is entirely your responsibility. As long as you maintain a GPA that looks like you give a scrap (and don’t break any laws), you basically get to be an adult. You’re still free from a lot of the mundane stresses of “real” adulthood—dining halls mean you don’t have to cook, maintenance folks mean you don’t have to worry about the leaky toilet, and so on—but you’re surrounded by a few hundred or thousand other people in the same boat, which alleviates a lot of the anxieties of this freedom you now have.

A lot of people might tell you that the point of going to college is to get a degree in something that interests you. They are wrong. The point of going to college is actually to learn how to figure shit out. And I don’t just mean academically; I also mean socially. A college dormitory is a great place to figure out who you are and how to get along with your peers, and, by extension, with society as a whole. I have a lot of nostalgia about my time in the dorms (I think it’d be impossible not to) and here are a collection of fond memories about those days.

I’d visited Meredith during a tour of campus at one time or another. Built in 1952, Meredith is a bit of an odd duck. Seen from above, it’s shaped like a a three-story X, with wings jutting at the ordinal north and south directions. The rooms are cramped and un-airconditioned, and the showers are communal. But it still had internet, and you could open the heavy windows and hope for a breeze! I toured a few other, newer halls that had newer fixtures and dining halls built-in, but something drew me to humble Meredith. Maybe because I’d spent most of my youth living in a partially finished attic, I was drawn to the hot, cramped conditions. Maybe it was because Meredith was centrally located among the other residence halls, with all kinds of dining and rec sports options just a crosswalk away. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Meredith, originally an all-women’s dorm1, was one of the only co-ed dorms on campus; the thought of bumping into a nice girl in the common rooms was just icing. The little convenience store just down the hall from the ping pong table, though? Top of the list.

Purdue had some kind of roommate matching survey thing. I don’t remember what it asked me, but I do remember filling it out and trusting whatever process the university used to put me with someone good. I got Eric’s AOL handle a few weeks later and we exchanged a few messages about what we were into. He liked football too, and played at his high school in Peoria, Illinois. His handle mentioned Chewie, which I thought was a Star Wars reference but no; his last name is Polish, and while its complicated pronunciation doesn’t contain the word “chew”, its spelling does. He was terse, but didn’t seem like a jerk.

I met him in person for the first time during Boiler Gold Rush, the two freshman orientation weeks before classes began. He was tall and broad, having honed his body to physique good for high school offensive line. I’d learn in time that he was obsessive about working out, because it was a good way to blow off steam after particularly strenuous study sessions (Eric was going into Civil Engineering) and because he absolutely loved PopTarts, which he only allowed himself when he was extremely stressed. “I used to be much bigger,” he confided in me once, “I didn’t like how I felt.” I admired his discipline.

I remember his mom bursting into tears as she hugged him goodbye on move-in day. “That’s tough,” he muttered to me. I didn’t know what to say. My mother and I had our own emotional goodbye a few hours before, but home for me was only an hour away (his, three), and I wasn’t her first kid to live away from home. Eric was the eldest of his family, and he’d lost his dad a year or so before. His mother was feeling the pride (my baby is going to college!) and grief (my baby is going to college…) of seeing her kid grow up. If you have the privilege of raising a child, you’ll understand how something can feel simultaneously wonderful and awful at once. To go through it as a widow? No wonder she sobbed.

I felt like an intruder for having witnessed the moment, but I think it was good for both of us. I got to see beneath Eric’s deep brow and behind his blue eyes, that the stoic, determined boy I’d be living with was actually quite sensitive. And he got to see that I wasn’t going to make fun of him for that. “You don’t live that far right? You can visit her soon?” I asked hopefully.

He shrugged. “Bout three hours, I guess. I’ll call her later.” He stared at the doorway she’d left for a few moments. “I’m gonna go work out,” he said finally.

I think there were 25 or 30 young men on my floor, Southwest One (the girls had the north half of Meredith). Aside from one or two loners (usually the guys obsessed with World of Warcraft), we all knew each other by name. Guys like Johnny, a dude from Stark county down south who always wore a John Deere cap and overalls, like he was born to study Agriculture. George, the lanky forestry major who was a sophomore and seemed so wise with a year of school under his belt already. Mark, who could have been George’s body double, a vet in training, liked fancy Stetsons and going on first dates (but rarely got a second one). Goofy Ryan who laughed a little like Woody Woodpecker and demanded I play Paint it Black whenever he saw me with my ukulele. Chill Robert who was supremely easy-going until he got behind his keyboard and played Counterstrike (at which he was phenomenally good), where he would transform into someone else and shout invectives as frequent as they were astonishing. Among these guys though, I had a core group of friends who’d I’d come to admire as brothers.

Ted, who lived across the hall, reminded me of Justin Long. He was easy-going and carried his guitar with him at all times; he taught me a few things on the ukulele too. I remember his dad clasping him in a hug as he said goodbye, beaming with pride, and handing Ted a bottle opener. “I know you’re gonna do stupid stuff,” he said, resting a hand on Ted’s shoulder. “But be smart about it, huh?” He winked and laughed, and Ted laughed too, full of affection.

Ross was Ted’s roommate. I believe they’d been matched like Eric and I had, but the way they took to each other made it seem like they’d been friends far longer. Perhaps that’s a testament to their personalities, but Ted being a Clevelander and Ross being a Yinzer2, they should have been mortal enemies. Ross might have been the smartest guy on our floor; he quietly shrugged his way through his electrical engineering courses and I believe even earned a scholarship for his exemplary work. He, Ted, and Eric all rushed the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity together, and more than once I helped them all evade capture by their pledge brothers by lying about their whereabouts.

Nick lived down the hall, but he was always in my room hanging out with Eric or just across the hall with Ted and Ross. He was a mellow dude from the Chicago suburbs and played club water polo. He walked with a fluid slouch and moved in a way that made him resemble Timon the meerkat from the Lion King. He was desperate for a girlfriend but was a little too nice, tried a little too hard, and the ladies politely declined him. I liked Nick, but I quickly learned I had to hide my snacks because he helped himself to whatever he laid eyes on.

Lastly there were Hugh and Grant, who, aside from Eric, were probably my closest friends in the hall. Unlike the other guys, these two were also from Indianapolis, though they hailed from the northside. They weren’t related biologically, but even so, loved each other so deeply you couldn’t possibly deny they were brothers if they’d told you so. Hugh was a lot like Eric: big arms, broad chest, workout fanatic. He was a little goofier, smiled a little easier, and preferred rugby over football, but otherwise he and Eric could also have convinced you they were related.

Grant, on the other hand, was a giant of joyful, Samoan-Filipino stock. Everyone who knew Grant loved him, and everyone seemed to know him. He’d be tackle-hugged by someone shrieking his name whenever we were together on campus and he would introduce them: “hey here’s so-and-so, they’re a BEAST.” That was Grant’s thing: everyone was “awesome” or “a beast” or “the best ever” and he made you believe it. It’s easy to see why Grant was so beloved. In fact, I might go so far to say, that Grant’s cheerful energy, his enthusiasm for people, is something I internalized and hope I put out into the world too. It’s truly beautiful energy.

It’s these guys that I’d go to dinner with almost every night. The guys I’d complain about school with, gossip about girls with, the ones I’d play touch football with in the band practice field. Being smaller and meeker than most of them, I felt a little like a little brother to all of them. It felt good to know these guys were looking out for me and included me in their adventures. Generally, they’d avoid on picking me and I’d play a role like Switzerland in the upcoming prank wars….

I’ve debated writing about her. People love sappy stuff, so as a content writer I know I ought to. But I like to keep my romantic notions closer to my chest, like a secret only meant for me and the other person. Then again, this is a post about nostalgia, and when I remember her in particular, there still grows a warmth beneath my sternum even these two decades later. How could I possibly write about my year at Meredith without mentioning Kate?

I met Kate the same week I met all the guys. Over the summer, Grant had sprained his ankle trying to longjump a bonfire and was confined to a wheelchair for the first month of school. In a quiet moment between activities during orientation week, he came rolling down the hall as he usually did. But this time, he wasn’t alone. Perched on his knees was a pretty girl with a gleeful smile. She laughed as he made wooshing noises, he paused briefly to say “whatsup buddy!” before about-facing and wheeling her back to his room at the end of the hall. I’d assumed she was his girlfriend; their simple delight together was all I needed to see to know they loved each other.

I realized I’d been wrong when I saw her again a few weeks later sitting behind me at a football game (two rows back, four seats over) and holding some other guy’s hand. I was curious about the auburn-haired girl with the keen eyes and broad smile, but chalked her up to one of those striking faces you recognize in a crowd that you wonder about for a few days then forget about.

Fate had other plans.

It turns out she had grown up with Hugh and Grant, and to them she was a sister. Kate visited them frequently, and it was not long before we were introduced. Kate and I got on immediately: she had the same jocular sense of humor as Hugh and Grant and intriguing taste in music and movies. Being the only daughter amongst brothers in her household, she fit right in with a group of boys like us and frequently appeared to play board games or share a pizza. She hated math and preferred art, so I promised to help her with trigonometry if she would help me with sketching, and we grew ever closer. Before long, she and I were messaging every day and she became one of my best friends.

She became an important fixture in my life, but that would blossom later in the school year….

One of the underrated aspects of living in a dorm is having a maintenance person. While they don’t clean the individual rooms, they would mop the floors and clean the bathrooms a couple times every week. Our caretaker was a gentle man approaching middle age named Raul. Originally a Texan, his wife was a professor at the university, teaching, I believe, psychology. Raul knew all of our names within the first week of classes starting. He always made a point of asking us how our days were going. How were our courses? Were we working hard and getting good grades? He’d poke his head in if we left our doors open to check on us. Small kindnesses that made the dorm feel a little more like home, like you still had an adult looking out for you. In turn, whenever he was cleaning the bathroom, we’d stop in to check on him and make sure his job wasn’t thankless.

Raul loved sports and talking about the latest football game, but I think the thing I remember most about him, aside from his jovial, even-keeled, never-complaining attitude was how much he loved his wife. He always talked about how beautiful she was, how happy he was to be the one who took care of the house and do the cooking so she could do her professor thing. I remember thinking how maybe he was perfectly content with life simply because he got to go home to her. “What do you like to make for her?” Grant asked. Being the most extroverted guy in the hall (maybe on campus), of course he engaged Raul the most.

“Oh that’s easy. The banana bread,” Raul said. He brightened. “You guys like chocolate chips?” He was going to bake that night and promised to bring us some. The next day, he carried in two loaves, carefully wrapped in aluminum foil.

It was amazing. A crisp outer crust, moist inside, the tangy banana flavor muted by vanilla. “Raul you should sell this,” someone from the ravenous crowd mumbled around a mouthful.

“Nah, it’s just for fun. Good though, right? Eat up now, my wife will be angry if I bring any home.” We knew how loath he was to disappoint the professor. I asked him for his secrets because my mom enjoyed baking the odd loaf of banana bread herself. “That’s between me and abuela,” Raul said with a touch of mischief in his eyes. “But try a little pineapple juice.”

I’ve used it in my own bread ever since.

This is the end of part one. Part two will contain more college fun, like prank wars and, yes, love. Enjoy it here:

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May 8

This is a follow up piece to a previously published collection of stories that was split for length. You probably want to read it to gather some context, if you haven’t.

If you want more college stories, consider reading (or listening!) to a story from the end of my time at Purdue:

BONUS BEAUETRY: Singles Appreciation Day 2009

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Feb 14

“Hey, listen, we need a new technology chair,” Ross said one day before football practice. We’d been working together for a year and a half and I liked him. He had a barrel chest and kinda remind me of Fred Flinstone (if Fred had a buzzcut and a smaller nose).