A Fresher No Longer… (Thus end the breaches of the Geneva Conventions)

Our closing ceremony just wrapped up. We are free.

Free of unwashable Fresher shirts (although hundreds of sneaky washing loads have been done), free of being forced to dance at the drop of a hat, and free of endless vollies of water pistol fire. What a loss!

College O-Week has been pretty intense, and I’m starting to feel it’s time to finish it up. Not that it hasn’t been a blast, but it’s also perpetrated this weird power relationship between Us and Them to an extent, which I won’t miss.

I love lists! Let’s make some lists!

Things about my shiny new life that are ace.

• I live two doors down from a truly delightful girl, willing to chin-wag, listen to music and generally enjoy life until four a.m. at the earliest, and then follow up with wake-up phone calls just before breakfast closes.
• It takes me about three minutes to get from my room to campus, I think. Staying at home and studying in Perth would have meant a grisly hour’s commute. Ugh.
• My college is full of wonderful people, who remain wonderful even when yelling at freshers.
• I live in Melbourne now, for God’s Jesusing sake! For a Perth lass, that is akin to moving to the garden of Eden.
• Ice-skating?

Things that are less fantastic

• It’s feeling like extended school camp (plus more drinking and arguing about literature). Which is weird.
• I am starting to realise I’ve gone back to an institution not wildly dissimilar to that of school, where some wield power and knowledge, cliques, gossip and rivalries are formed, and a weird mix of pride and rebellion bubbles. It’s an environment I was over the moon to have left behind upon graduation.
• My friends – my real friends who’ve known me for years and years, who I don’t have to be a shiny ‘best self’ around, who I really connect with and adore, are all three thousand kilometres away. Minimum. I hadn’t expected, as I was explaining to my corridor friend about half three this morning, to feel so distant from my old life, but all the things I am used to are waaaaay back there. My favourite beaches, cafes, shops, laneways, magazines and people now exist in a life that doesn’t involve me, and that feels profoundly odd.
• I have almost no money. College can feed, teach, and house us, but they can’t buy us clothes and treats and drinks and coffee and bicycle baskets and textbooks and gifts for people we know and first aid gear and furniture and all the myriad of stuff I am realising I need. It’s overwhelming. I need a puncture repair kit and a haircut and handbags with fewer holes. Toss some my way, internet buddies.

So, that’s me. A bit of a whinge.

Over and out. I send beams of positive energy in your collective directions.