Part Two - Freshman Year, Fall Semester
Moving from Ohio to California in early August made me realize just how little shit I actually
owned
that I cared about. Sure, I had a few boxes of clothes, a few boxes of books, and all my CDs and DVDs, but other than that, I was pretty light in terms of sentimental stuff. My TV was basically the biggest thing I owned, and I just loaded everything I had into a Uhaul truck, which I ended up driving across the country out to California.
I know, you're wondering why I didn't take my crappy Geo Prism with me. Well, when all the paperwork came, there was a note from Dr. Igarashi, informing me that in addition to my scholarship, they would be gifting each student a slightly used car, so as to make the move from wherever we were from to California that much easier. The pink slip was even included with the note. Apparently I'd been given a 1994 silver Ford Taurus GL with about 8,000 miles on it.
By this point, I'd already figured out that C.A.R.P. was going to be a very different educational experience than what I would've gotten if I'd have gone anywhere else in the country. There wasn't a giant list of classes and times to pick from - I spent about two hours on the phone with another professor at CARP detailing what I thought I needed from my first year's worth of education, while taking their advice on things that I should be getting a baseline education on as well. Between the two of us, we sort of talked out what my week should look like. I'd figured that was going to be the precursor to me being a list of classes, but a week or so later, an envelope had arrived with my fall schedule. Classes, professors, room locations, class times - it was all there. A four day schedule with Fridays off. None of the classes started before ten in the morning. All just as the good doctor had promised me before hand.
The drive to Montara was mostly uneventful, but it did afford me the chance to see a lot of the country I'd never seen before, and driving through San Francisco was a trip, let me tell you. It was nice to know I was going to basically be by a great big city without being
in
a great big city.
Once arriving on campus, I found that the CARP campus wasn't all that big, but it was still a fenced off area with a security guard at the gate who checked my ID before letting me and my Uhaul in. I wondered how the hell I was going to get pizza delivered to my dorm room with the gate, but I found out soon enough.
I was told that we were welcome to arrive any time between August 11
th
and August 16
th
, with orientation happening on August 18
th
, which was a Monday, and classes starting on the 19
th
. There would be plenty of time to explore the campus, I figured, once I moved into my dorm room and got set up, so I got to campus on the 13
th
. We hadn't been allowed to pick our own dorm rooms, but had been given a few basic options, like if we wanted ground floor, second floor, third floor, fourth floor or fifth floor, and a middle unit or a corner unit. I'd chosen fifth floor because I wanted the view, and the professor who had talked me through the classes had recommended I take a corner unit, because they were, in his words, a little more roomy. I remember not really knowing what to think, so I agreed to take his advice and had asked for a corner room.
One of the things we'd been told to expect was that for our freshman year the dorms would feel somewhat empty. They had considered concentrating all the students in one place, but had instead decided to give people plenty of space, and students could move in between years to consolidate into blocks if they saw fit. They weren't entirely sure how our needs were going to evolve over the years and wanted to leave themselves lots of options to make sure we enjoyed our time at CARP.
There was a good looking girl at the counter for the dorm who had my welcome package, which also included my room number (#512) and my room key, as well as a key to the building. I brought the first big box of my clothes over to the elevator and headed upstairs. There was a bit of a walk from the elevator to my dorm room, and as I walked down the hallway, I noticed some of the doors had white boards attached to the front of them, and some did not. I'd later find out that was a way to tell which rooms actually had people staying in them, but it would take us the better part of a month to figure that out, because, well, we were all a little bit distracted.
I unlocked the door to my room and saw that the dorm room was actually quite sizable, although that wasn't the first thing I noticed about it. The first thing I noticed about it was that it was a double, and that there were two beds in the room. Nobody had told me anything about having a roommate, but it looked like my roomie had already shown up. The bed on the left had an extra pillow on it, and there was already a couch and a bigger TV than the one I'd brought with me set up across from it. Whoever my roomie was, clearly he had money, because there was also a nice stereo and very up to date computer set up at the left desk built into the wall, although I would find out a little bit later that there was a second computer in a box waiting for me, and that the university had provided those to us free of charge.
It's never nice to pry so I decided not to go looking through my roomie's things, and just kept bringing up my stuff to the room, even my television, which I just left sitting on the floor. It only took about five trips to get all my stuff and into my room and by the time I'd gotten everything in there, I still hadn't seen hide nor hair of my roomie, but I had found the computer, so I'd begun setting that up on my desk when I heard the sound of a key jiggling in the door.
Here's where I feel like everything started going crazy. The door opened and a 6'2" blonde girl in a white tennis skirt and tennis shirt walked into the room, carrying a racket under one arm and a long gym bag in her other hand. She was the quintessential Californian beauty, bright blue eyes, golden hair done up in a sporty ponytail, not wearing any makeup, but let's be honest, she was a ten even without it. She tossed the gym bag onto the other bed as she glanced over at me. "Oh hey roomie, about time you showed up," she said with a laugh. "I was starting to wonder if you weren't going to get here until Friday or Saturday, which would've totally sucked."
"Uh," I remember saying, "are you sure you're in the same room? Or that I'm not in the wrong one? I don't think I've ever heard of a campus having co-ed
rooms
. I mean,
floors
, sure, but