Starting out at ONU three years ago was terrifying and exciting, as I'm sure you know. That's naturally how everyone feels when starting college. Now I'm getting ready to start my senior year and I've got it all together, or something... Anyway, at least I've got my friends and an easy year ahead of me. But before I had my friends I was incredibly lost.
I was assigned to Five University Parkway, or as the cool kids call it 5UP. 5UP was once a sorority house so it had the wonder of bigger rooms! With that came living with more than one other person, and of course that came with unique challenges. Four shower stalls and four toilets, all on the second of three floors, that held the wonder of sharing a bathroom with 35 other women. Living through it makes you a stronger person, promise. But of everything gross, crazy, dramatic, and mostly fun that came along with living there freshman year, I wouldn't change a thing. I met my person there. I met my boyfriend because of them. I gained my family.
Ten of us came out of that house best friends.
Three years later (which feels like forever in a college bubble), we're still close friends. We screenshot terrible snapchats and post them in our group chat. We laugh about the stupid decisions we made, and plan the new ones together. We love board games, Shonda Rhimes, volleyball, dancing in our rooms to '90s and early '00s music, being terrified at scary movies together and capitalizing on each other's fear. We love and hate each other, but wouldn't want to ever be without each other.
When I lost my dad last fall these friends came to me four hours away, ate bad Chinese food with me, helped me put together his picture boards, dealt with my family, and let me grieve. They continue to love me with my depression and anxiety. They're honest with me and they don't take my crap. They tease me and each other. They're irreplaceable, (cue music).
We live in groups in separate houses now, alone in apartments or as an RA, broken apart compared to freshman year, but when we get together it's like nothing has changed. Going into my last year at ONU I have this fear that I could lose them after I graduate. I will move away in a year and start graduate school without them. I'll be starting the next chapter of my life, as will they. But I think I'm just as irreplaceable to them as they are to me.
My friends - Jess, Theresa, Mikayla, Kayla, Amanda, Celine, Peggy, Sierra, and Jasmine - are my family away from home. We're improbable and it doesn't quite make sense that our living conditions freshman year brought us all together. But here we are, determinedly close, and that's how we'll stay.
I'd like to say that finding friends like this at ONU is unique, but it's not. Lucky for you, you will make incredible memories and lifelong friends in your three to six years here. You'll find your family too.
