I've tried blogging before. I have the attention span of an amoeba. Therefore, no blog of my creation has survived more than a couple of posts. (Except a brief emo stint in the early years of my adolescence where I used the internet to voice my teenage angst, but we won't get into that.
However, I have just begun a stage of my life that is so unique, it deserves to be chronicled. See, I am a 22 year old W.A.S.P. from the rural backwoods of eastern North Carolina. By rural, I mean I have pet goats in my backyard and have been known to use a lawnmower as a means of transportation. In addition, I was by any standards the biggest loser at my public high school of 2000 students. Four years ago, I escaped that existence (to a point) and started college at Duke University where I majored in History and Classical Civilizations, and minored in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I joined a sorority, attended parties to which I was actually invited, studied abroad, and even dated a little. Following my graduation this past May, I left Duke with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I had made amazing friends and cried over the fact that it would be a probability that we'd never all be together again, but I also regretted the extent to which I had allowed myself to be absorbed into the fratty, somewhat pretentious scene that permeated about 40% of campus society. Which is a big reason why halfway through my senior year I pursued a post-graduation life completely different from every other Duke grad. I applied and got accepted to graduate school Fordham University, the school I had wanted to attend ever since I discovered their Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
But the interesting thing about Fordham is that it's a great, private school in the Bronx. The idea of moving to the Bronx made me both intrigued me and made me nervous. I had never been to the Bronx, and never really had any intention of going there. Nonetheless, and much to my parents' dismay, I moved here two weeks ago. My dad rented a small U-haul trailer, we packed up all my belongings, and drove the 11 hour drive from coastal North Carolina to New York City. Looking back, I should have encouraged my parents to begin the trip in the evening, drive all night "to avoid D.C. traffic," and arrive the next morning. Neither of them had spent any time in New York in at least 20 years, and they had definitely never been to the Bronx, so when we got here late in the evening, they were totally unprepared for the great amount of people sitting in folding chairs on the sidewalk, speaking a number of languages other than English, and the rather dirty staircase leading to my third floor walk-up apartment. Both of them started sobbing and shouting that they refused to leave me here and didn't raise their only daughter to become a victim and threatening to leave all my stuff packed in the truck and take me home immediately. When I asked about how I'd be attending school, they said we'd find another one regardless of how past the application deadlines I was. In fact, they were so leery of my apartment that they insisted on sleeping in our truck in a public parking garage for the night. I had seen the neighborhood before and told them to give it a day, to be fair the place does seem a little seedy at night, but I had no plans of wandering the streets after dark. The area completely transformed during daytime hours though. Kids rode bikes and scooters in the street, a cute little flea market set up every day in the square two blocks from my building, and the train to Manhattan was a four minute walk away. Fordham's ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS campus was just as close. Also, the Bronx version of little Italy is four blocks west. My dad said that no amount of daytime transformation would convince him to leave me here. And I began sobbing because I had already signed a year lease and paid the deposit and first month's rent. But I was right. The next morning birds were chirping and well-dressed people were walking to work. My apartment was spacious and let in a great deal of light. By 4:00 p.m., they left and started the journey back to the South with minimal tears.
My life here is quirky and I'm completely out of place. I love it here.
