Accidentally dying your roommate’s hair purple in the Watson-Webb bathroom, under harsh fluorescent lights.
Quiet prayer on Wednesday evenings on red couches, in a familiar ivy-covered house.
Unintentionally killing four orchids and two Betta fish, named Jaws and Jaws II.
Trying College Inn cheesy bread for the first time. And avocado feta pizza. And Cool Ranch Doritos. And O-Hill ice milk. And Carter Mountain donuts.
Walking on the dewy grass of the Lawn at 6 a.m., the morning after an all-nighter. It is listening to the sparrows as the soft morning light reflects off the Rotunda dome.
Sitting next to an accused student during an Honor trial and hearing “not guilty” announced by the chair. It is walking out of the room to a hug from the student’s sobbing mother.
Seven pairs of shoes ruined on sticky fraternity floors.
It is cooking eggs and blueberry pancakes with your roommates on a snow day, gentle flurries quieting University Circle.
Sneaking into secret gardens on Sunday afternoons and peeling dandelions petal by petal, over conversations about “Paradise Lost” and stage fright.
Phoning your mom, anxious and panicked about something they call the “future,” driving five miles per hour under the speed limit. Hearing her say, “It will all work out,” but doubting it.
Taylor Swift and Yeezus and Tracy Chapman and learning every word to “Wagon Wheel.”
Falling in love. And out of love. And in love again.
Thinking you might want to be a doctor, then getting your first biology exam back and re-thinking.
Racist graffiti and the “not gay” chant. Talking to a friend who says, “I’m not surprised. Just tired.”
Watching your friends perform “Hamlet” and “Titus Andronicus” and sing in the Hullabahoos and the Virginia Gentlemen and dance in a Chinese New Year celebration.
It is reading and rereading Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” Sitting in your professor’s office hours talking about pickup basketball and Bonhoeffer. Their questions, their curiosity, their passion about Achebe and Coates and Yeats and Foucault.
Nailing art to the walls of your first apartment.
It is sitting in the Amphitheatre during a candlelight vigil, holding plastic cups with flickering flames. Praying for the safe return of a missing classmate, thousands of voices raised in the cool fall air.
Late nights in Alderman stacks and Clemons cubicles and thinking you’ll never finish the paper or pass the exam or be hired by anyone.
It is thinking you’re too big in some places and not big enough in others; too blonde or not blonde enough, all at once.
Games of Scattergories in your living room, piccolo at El Jaripeo, and Kings on your back porch with fireflies like embers in the trees in summer twilight.
GroupMes and group texts and too many listserves. It is snapchats and Facebook stalking your crush and your crush’s ex-girlfriend’s sister. And Netflix.
It is feeling both very old and so young.
Walking past Mad Bowl each morning, rugby players and sun-bathers and slip-and-sliders all congregating under the new spring sun.
It is a Love Connection date.
Sam and Judy’s Friday brunch.
It is surviving. It is remembering. It is becoming. It is trying to imagine where you’ll be of use.
Double-bourbon gingers at the Virginian on Sunday nights.
Imagining living in San Francisco or New York or Washington, D.C. Imagining yourself in Charlottesville forever. Imagining traveling to Malaysia or Dublin and being unable to imagine where you would buy the simple things, like milk or gummy vitamins.
Parents and friends and older brothers, burdened by depression and addiction. Not knowing what to say.
It is worrying you’ll never love a place as much as you love the winding brick pathways, the quiet, stark simplicity of Corinthian columns, the gently curving serpentine walls.
Singing the “Good Old Song” at a basketball game.
Driving each Tuesday to Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center. It is pat-downs and walking past locked mint green doors and across a wide concrete courtyard. It is seeing the faces of the residents, your friends, and talking about sisters and forgiveness and chocolate. It is the long drive back to Grounds, knowing you will never see them again.
Wine tasting and cider tasting and neglecting your 20-page term paper to imagine the five of you in 10 years, in 50 years. It is vaguely picturing children or maybe an art gallery.
It is your first Convocation, gathering on the Lawn with your hallmates, unsure if these buildings, this school, would ever feel like your home. It is imagining the walk down the Lawn in a few weeks, colored balloons and teary parents, and your best friends beside you, wondering how you will survive the strange, mysterious place called the real world. It is thinking this place feels real, and also perfect, and deeply flawed, and also just like home.
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