Blue and Silver: The College Experience
This past week was CNU Day so I saw a lot of classmates from my old undergraduate alma mater posting about their college experiences and memories online so I've decided to do the same but it's me so it's going to be really rambling and longwinded. Christopher Newport University, originally a junior college offshoot of the College of William & Mary, is nestled in southeastern Virginia somewhere along I-64 in between Colonial Williamsburg and Norfolk. It was pretty apparent early on that I wasn't going to go to college out of state and CNU made the most sense of all the schools I got into for a number of reasons: Small, liberal arts-focused, close to the beach, furthest from home. I had definitely had my fun in high school and, at its absolute highs (Which fortunately came often), I never wanted it to end but college truly was the next step and after the last summer, I was ready.
In some ways, the transition from high school to college was a lot like the transition between elementary school to middle school: A sort of jarring, hey this isn't like it was last time shift that had me need to up my game and adapt to the new surroundings. It wasn't the heightened autonomy; I had largely been taking care of myself and my sister the last couple years of high school. It wasn't Newport News in general, I tend to get my bearings geographically relatively quickly. It was probably a mix of the looser responsibility and having to live with my classmates instead of the luxury of not seeing most of them outside of school. And something I quickly discovered is that while the social intensity had greatly increased since high school, there was also a greater sense of consequence. Back in high school, it was a lot more freewheeling with clandestine getaways in the backwoods of Northern Virginia (I think I'm still missing a pair of sneakers somewhere in the Occoquan Watershed after one such escapade), the kind you'd run/drive away laughing because of the mischief you'd just avoided in trouble for. Cops at Christopher Newport were a little more vigilant especially when it came to breaking up parties. I managed to dodge trouble initially but, hell, it's not like I'm known for my luck, right? So Year One is about consequence in as much as that was an underlying theme throughout but it was really about making new friends in a new town and this is me we're talking about so we've been friends for a looooong time.
So when I think fondly back on Year One, I think of staying up way too late walking to the nearby shopping center to pick up cheap takeout pizza. I think of smoking cigarettes out in front of the dorm talking to my friends and neighbors as they drunkenly returned; I stayed pretty sober the remainder of Year One into Year Two. I think of cramming before final exams in the lobby by the fireplace, Hogwarts-style, drinking coffee and Jolt Cola while listening to everything from Frank Zappa to Coldplay spending more time making each other laugh than reading about molecular biology.
Things really start shaping up by Year Two; those initial friendships are set and I'm not rooming with random people anymore. I've gotten a lay of the land and I've carved my own growing niche on campus. A bit more to the point, there is an idea of permanence this time around: CNU wasn't actually my first pick when I was doing applications, it was JMU. I had it in the back of my mind starting that first semester that I would transfer out...but I kind of fell in love with the place so I decided to stay. That means I was more invested in my surroundings going in this time around and it made me a lot more present. Year One is about meeting new people and places, Year Two is about getting to know them and, more intimidatingly, them getting to know me. Sometimes, a little too much for my liking; one of my roommates ended up dating my sister for the better part of that year which was...awkward. I got chicken pox that year too which ended up being a whole thing.
When I think of Year Two, I'm thinking about our living room being a really chill place for our friends and neighbors to swing by and just hang out; we had employed an open door policy where so long as at least one of the four of us were around, anybody could stop in, grab a drink or a snack, park themselves on the couch, and be part of the gang. We were a little more insular as a result because we were the ones that were always hosting. But everything was really falling into place pretty quickly in those days: I was studying multiple languages, two of my roommates started dating the women that would go on to become their wives (not the one that dated my sister), friendships solidified.
Year Three saw a change in the dynamic in that we moved into an apartment several stories directly above a bar; a real How I Met Your Mother situation going on there. So while we still hosted movie nights and the like in our apartment now across the street from campus, the de facto hangout spot shifted downstairs to the conveniently located bar. As a parking space was included with my rent, it was also the first year where I brought down my car for college which meant dates didn't have to be on campus anymore, I could do the romantic picnics by the York River or just generally leave the area to see the greater Tidewater region whenever I wanted. We lived right across the hall from some of our best friends too so maybe it was more like Friends? We didn't date any of them and, as far as I know, there was no romantic tension there either; we all had our own stuff going on in that area. In a lot of ways, Year Three was probably my favorite year of college...but I had like two more years to go.
By Year Four, things are starting to move into their endgame. I'm spending more time in the library, writing and reading in the coffeeshop connected to it in between classes. Just as I have a tendency to maintain friendships, I also have a tendency to take courses with the same professors; being a small university, it was not unusual to take multiple classes with the same faculty and I would often go out of my way to register for classes with them, scheduling permitting. That means they were used to my learning styles, when to call me on my bullshit, how to better motivate me; a lot of those working relationships would build off into actual friendships which I feel like a lot of bigger schools miss out on. I'm also pretty heavily into a committed relationship at that point so just about every weekend and a fair amount of weeknights I'm with my girlfriend making date nights out of homemade dinners, curling up on the couch, or catching a movie or show on the town. The parties are still there but they're fewer and farther in between. It's really the first glimpse of what my 20s will end up being.
Year Five is kind of a mixed bag. For starters, the big reason I'm doing it is to stay a bit longer with the aforementioned girlfriend (she was a year behind me). Yes, of course, I get to take more time with my communications major, expand my minor in Spanish into a full-on second major, pick up a couple minors, and take literally every single Italian class CNU offers at that time...but I really did it so I could graduate with my girlfriend. I'm kind of a big softie despite the smug exterior, that shit is mostly for show. That year was really me living with that decision. Most of my friends had graduated and moved on. I was no longer living in an apartment within walking distance of campus which definitely affected the social aspect of college to a degree. Scholarships don't really account for recipients to take an extra year so I was pulling two jobs to make it all work. College for me started with regaining that sense of responsibility in a way. By the end, it was inescapably front and center.
Reading back over that last paragraph, I'm making it all seem like doom and gloom but there were definitely good times had. The library coffeeshop had become the de facto hangout spot now passing time reading or playing solitaire and chess; my friends would later comment that they could always tell if I was on campus when they heard my boisterous, goofy laugh echoing through the library. While Schooner's, the bar we had lived on top of was still the usual Friday afternoon hangout spot to close out a week of class, we now lived within walking distance of Brickhouse Tavern, which I would argue was the most popular bar among the CNU kids and if you wanted a pretty good pizza or plate of cheesy bread, they had you covered too. And it's not like I kept to friends my age, I had friends in every group across those five years not unlike how I approached high school socially. Something about casting a wide net and leaving an open door. I don't regret taking an extra year of college but there were absolutely things that balanced the scales there.
So when I think of CNU, I think of friendships, the kinds that were willing to brave nocturnal mischief or just pass the time and make everything exponentially better in the face of ennui. I think of challenges that would refine and continue to define who I am as I faced my own burgeoning adulthood at the time, sometimes in the classroom but usually out of it. I think of love which is always worth it. I think of adventures including all those trips around the world studying abroad I wrote of weeks ago and other adventures that were either international but not sanctioned by the university or domestic and...still not sanctioned by the university. CNU was more than those evening strolls on brick and through the deciduous forests of Virginia. It was more than walking through Yorktown or taking in the beaches along the York River or Virginia Beach. I had faced my own personal gauntlet and emerged shaken but stronger from it by the end of high school. College is where the rough edges were sanded down and I set out to become the man I was meant to be.
When I think about CNU, I feel good about the good stuff and bad about the bad stuff but, at the end of the day...I wouldn't change a thing.
In some ways, the transition from high school to college was a lot like the transition between elementary school to middle school: A sort of jarring, hey this isn't like it was last time shift that had me need to up my game and adapt to the new surroundings. It wasn't the heightened autonomy; I had largely been taking care of myself and my sister the last couple years of high school. It wasn't Newport News in general, I tend to get my bearings geographically relatively quickly. It was probably a mix of the looser responsibility and having to live with my classmates instead of the luxury of not seeing most of them outside of school. And something I quickly discovered is that while the social intensity had greatly increased since high school, there was also a greater sense of consequence. Back in high school, it was a lot more freewheeling with clandestine getaways in the backwoods of Northern Virginia (I think I'm still missing a pair of sneakers somewhere in the Occoquan Watershed after one such escapade), the kind you'd run/drive away laughing because of the mischief you'd just avoided in trouble for. Cops at Christopher Newport were a little more vigilant especially when it came to breaking up parties. I managed to dodge trouble initially but, hell, it's not like I'm known for my luck, right? So Year One is about consequence in as much as that was an underlying theme throughout but it was really about making new friends in a new town and this is me we're talking about so we've been friends for a looooong time.
So when I think fondly back on Year One, I think of staying up way too late walking to the nearby shopping center to pick up cheap takeout pizza. I think of smoking cigarettes out in front of the dorm talking to my friends and neighbors as they drunkenly returned; I stayed pretty sober the remainder of Year One into Year Two. I think of cramming before final exams in the lobby by the fireplace, Hogwarts-style, drinking coffee and Jolt Cola while listening to everything from Frank Zappa to Coldplay spending more time making each other laugh than reading about molecular biology.
Things really start shaping up by Year Two; those initial friendships are set and I'm not rooming with random people anymore. I've gotten a lay of the land and I've carved my own growing niche on campus. A bit more to the point, there is an idea of permanence this time around: CNU wasn't actually my first pick when I was doing applications, it was JMU. I had it in the back of my mind starting that first semester that I would transfer out...but I kind of fell in love with the place so I decided to stay. That means I was more invested in my surroundings going in this time around and it made me a lot more present. Year One is about meeting new people and places, Year Two is about getting to know them and, more intimidatingly, them getting to know me. Sometimes, a little too much for my liking; one of my roommates ended up dating my sister for the better part of that year which was...awkward. I got chicken pox that year too which ended up being a whole thing.
When I think of Year Two, I'm thinking about our living room being a really chill place for our friends and neighbors to swing by and just hang out; we had employed an open door policy where so long as at least one of the four of us were around, anybody could stop in, grab a drink or a snack, park themselves on the couch, and be part of the gang. We were a little more insular as a result because we were the ones that were always hosting. But everything was really falling into place pretty quickly in those days: I was studying multiple languages, two of my roommates started dating the women that would go on to become their wives (not the one that dated my sister), friendships solidified.
Year Three saw a change in the dynamic in that we moved into an apartment several stories directly above a bar; a real How I Met Your Mother situation going on there. So while we still hosted movie nights and the like in our apartment now across the street from campus, the de facto hangout spot shifted downstairs to the conveniently located bar. As a parking space was included with my rent, it was also the first year where I brought down my car for college which meant dates didn't have to be on campus anymore, I could do the romantic picnics by the York River or just generally leave the area to see the greater Tidewater region whenever I wanted. We lived right across the hall from some of our best friends too so maybe it was more like Friends? We didn't date any of them and, as far as I know, there was no romantic tension there either; we all had our own stuff going on in that area. In a lot of ways, Year Three was probably my favorite year of college...but I had like two more years to go.
By Year Four, things are starting to move into their endgame. I'm spending more time in the library, writing and reading in the coffeeshop connected to it in between classes. Just as I have a tendency to maintain friendships, I also have a tendency to take courses with the same professors; being a small university, it was not unusual to take multiple classes with the same faculty and I would often go out of my way to register for classes with them, scheduling permitting. That means they were used to my learning styles, when to call me on my bullshit, how to better motivate me; a lot of those working relationships would build off into actual friendships which I feel like a lot of bigger schools miss out on. I'm also pretty heavily into a committed relationship at that point so just about every weekend and a fair amount of weeknights I'm with my girlfriend making date nights out of homemade dinners, curling up on the couch, or catching a movie or show on the town. The parties are still there but they're fewer and farther in between. It's really the first glimpse of what my 20s will end up being.
Year Five is kind of a mixed bag. For starters, the big reason I'm doing it is to stay a bit longer with the aforementioned girlfriend (she was a year behind me). Yes, of course, I get to take more time with my communications major, expand my minor in Spanish into a full-on second major, pick up a couple minors, and take literally every single Italian class CNU offers at that time...but I really did it so I could graduate with my girlfriend. I'm kind of a big softie despite the smug exterior, that shit is mostly for show. That year was really me living with that decision. Most of my friends had graduated and moved on. I was no longer living in an apartment within walking distance of campus which definitely affected the social aspect of college to a degree. Scholarships don't really account for recipients to take an extra year so I was pulling two jobs to make it all work. College for me started with regaining that sense of responsibility in a way. By the end, it was inescapably front and center.
Reading back over that last paragraph, I'm making it all seem like doom and gloom but there were definitely good times had. The library coffeeshop had become the de facto hangout spot now passing time reading or playing solitaire and chess; my friends would later comment that they could always tell if I was on campus when they heard my boisterous, goofy laugh echoing through the library. While Schooner's, the bar we had lived on top of was still the usual Friday afternoon hangout spot to close out a week of class, we now lived within walking distance of Brickhouse Tavern, which I would argue was the most popular bar among the CNU kids and if you wanted a pretty good pizza or plate of cheesy bread, they had you covered too. And it's not like I kept to friends my age, I had friends in every group across those five years not unlike how I approached high school socially. Something about casting a wide net and leaving an open door. I don't regret taking an extra year of college but there were absolutely things that balanced the scales there.
So when I think of CNU, I think of friendships, the kinds that were willing to brave nocturnal mischief or just pass the time and make everything exponentially better in the face of ennui. I think of challenges that would refine and continue to define who I am as I faced my own burgeoning adulthood at the time, sometimes in the classroom but usually out of it. I think of love which is always worth it. I think of adventures including all those trips around the world studying abroad I wrote of weeks ago and other adventures that were either international but not sanctioned by the university or domestic and...still not sanctioned by the university. CNU was more than those evening strolls on brick and through the deciduous forests of Virginia. It was more than walking through Yorktown or taking in the beaches along the York River or Virginia Beach. I had faced my own personal gauntlet and emerged shaken but stronger from it by the end of high school. College is where the rough edges were sanded down and I set out to become the man I was meant to be.
When I think about CNU, I feel good about the good stuff and bad about the bad stuff but, at the end of the day...I wouldn't change a thing.
