On my first day immersed in the life of a college student, I scoured Jones Hall for room 317. I finally found my door, marked by a name tag \u201cMillie Reich, Los Angeles, CA,\u201d and, to my surprise, nothing else. Just my name, alone on the door, in a hall full of pairs.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, I was relieved. Forced socialization past a certain hour has never been my favorite thing. Even so, I was daunted by the expansive four hours until the first program event which I knew would be full of awkward conversations and icebreakers. Talking to a roommate would have filled that time.<\/p>\n
My mom and I kept ourselves busy for the next few hours. We explored Evanston and looted the local Crossroads thrift store. But once the last-minute Target essentials were bought and my room was set up perfectly, I realized that was it.<\/p>\n
My parents lingered as long as socially acceptable, and after our final goodbyes, I was left with\u2026myself.<\/p>\n
After about half an hour, I decided to leave my room with worries that I would spend the next four weeks friendless. As soon as I opened my door, I met the girl in the single next to mine. She wore the same denim shorts and white T-shirt I had put on that morning. Comforted by our matching outfits and introductory conversation, I knew I wasn’t going to be lonely.<\/p>\n
Spoiler alert: I made friends, some of the best in my life, and along the way, I began to forget my initial roommate jealousy.<\/p>\n
After hours of classes, conversations and adventures, my room became a safe place and an escape from the chaos of 84 teenagers living together. I woke up, went to sleep and made my bed (or not) on my own schedule.<\/p>\n
Although I cherished this freedom, the time alone was much sweeter knowing my friends were waiting for me outside my door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first day is hard, but without a roommate, it\u2019s a lesson in finding comfort in your own company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":5421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,340],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[314],"class_list":["post-4562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences","category-front-page-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":314,"user_id":159,"is_guest":0,"slug":"milliereich","display_name":"Millie Reich","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5670c63714914fdd7e33e3683c874a2d4c3fbed5ffd5bf6fd41e64f843a32b80?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Reich","first_name":"Millie","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4562"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6572,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions\/6572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4562"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}