In Which I Discover My New Room

I admit that I'm pretty terrible about checking my e-mail - there's a reason that I set up my 'professional'/boring e-mail address to forward directly into my normal inbox. However, point is, the class of 2016 finally received their housing assignments!

I've been watching my friends figure out housing for months, and several of my friends have patiently listened to me rant about how much I just wanted to know already. I requested a room in a first-year dorm wing specifically for people from (or interested in) the world outside the US - I figured it would be more exciting and give my future roommate and I something to talk about, at least.

I have yet to talk with Future Roommate, so I don't know anything about her besides her name. What I do know is that I wound up in a corner room on the second floor, separated from the next room by the staircase... which will make moving in a bit easier because I won't have to move things around the hallway so much. According to Google Earth, I'll have a lovely view of a street and parking lot out one window.

My impending departure from my beloved lilac bedroom seems so much more real now.

What Am I Walking Into?

There's hundreds of books out there that promise to de-bunk the college admissions process - I would know, as I think half of them sat on my bookshelves at one point. I don't promise to do that. Instead, what I'm hoping is to offer up a view of what happens after you're admitted, you've sent in your deposit, and arrived on campus.

For some background knowledge: I'm Shannon, a curly-haired geek from Seattle. My parents have lived in the same house since before I was born; I moved about twelve feet partway through junior high into a different bedroom. I went to a reasonably-sized public school in the area, where I was an IB diploma student (about which I will speak at length if the subject is brought up), co-editor of the yearbook, and leader of a club or two. For my high school, I wasn't an overachiever, and my grades were nothing special. I willingly admit that I struggled with the stress that IB classes as well as my general schedule placed on me. However, I wound up getting accepted at a fantastic school that fell squarely into that "reach" category all those books talk about: Oberlin. 

Of course, the process of choosing a school to go to is complex, and there's a ton of resources out there to describe how to do that. As for myself, I received my acceptance letter to Oberlin and screamed out loud, frightening several of the parents waiting at the bus stop for their children. There wasn't a whole lot of questioning about where I wanted to go.

 I have to say I'm looking forward to living away from home, but that comes with the biggest footnote ever.  I've lived in a place where I got spectacular views of mountains just from driving down the freeway, and some of my biggest memories from childhood feature the Puget Sound. I love the Pacific Northwest with all my coffee-swilling, Dungeness-crab-catching, rain-soaked heart, and what I intend to do in this blog is discuss the adjustment that newly-minted college kids will have to go through when moving to a different part of the US for The College Experience.