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Fires and Foreign Places
Certain things are universal. For example, at 6:00 p.m. on a Thursday night, the fire alarm might go off and multiple blocks of flats might have to file out onto the freezing cold streets, grumbling about “block 9 flat 7” for setting off the alarm. Apparently, in my very unique apartment/dorm/university-owned housing unit (which is exactly what you’d expect from university-owned housing), you can actually see who is at fault for setting off the fire alarm. When the alarm went off, my flat mate and I stared at each other blankly. I had been in her room preparing to show her pictures of the insane Italian cruise ship crash, when a loud buzzing went off. For a moment, I thought I had pressed a weird button on her computer, or perhaps that our very strange looking intercom system was indicating someone was trying to call up to our room. Alas, we realized we should probably evacuate and had the sense to put on thick coats and some boots before heading out into the 30-degree evening. For a brief moment I felt like I had been transported back to Troy Hall, with the endless nightly fire alarms. Once my flat mate and I arrived safely outside, amidst the herds of frustrated students angered at being pulled from their tasks, I realized that despite a similar situation, I was still in a different country. Accented students huddle in groups with their friends, complaining about the alarm and waiting to be told the building was safe. I stood with my flat mate, and another abroad student I knew wandered over toward us, and it again became glaringly obvious that we weren’t from around there. Having only been in Edinburgh a day, I had not found it weird that I only had a handful of acquaintances. Similar to the beginning of freshman year, my current friends were people who I had been clustered with into orientation tour groups, or one or two people who lived in my building. I wondered if when I leave at the end of the semester I’ll look through my pictures and laugh at these initial ones, taken with people I barely knew yet and some people I might never see again. USC provides its freshmen, as well as its transfer students, countless ways to connect and quickly make friends. Welcome week provides events and takes the awkwardness out of trying to plan outings with new friends, and rush provides an entire community and potential hours of conversation to bridge even more connections. The process of rushing itself, particularly sorority rush, with long periods of time spent in the wait room, leads to unlikely friendships between people who might otherwise not have met. The conversations during rush force confidence in talking to strangers, and with each conversation the confidence grows. As much complaints as rush gets, the opportunities for friends cannot be denied. In absence of the type of instant community I gained when I joined Kappa at the beginning of freshman year, in Edinburgh I’ve simply promised myself that I will say yes to everything. Even when saying yes means darting out into the night alone, attempting to find a friend’s flat in early darkness and freezing weather, I know the experience will give me the type of confidence I gained with each conversation during rush.
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