{"id":7807,"date":"2025-07-22T19:49:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T00:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=7807"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:18:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T04:18:04","slug":"first-night-brings-friends-fun-and-deadlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/first-night-brings-friends-fun-and-deadlines\/","title":{"rendered":"First night brings friends, fun and deadlines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jane Mercer of Memphis, Tennessee, had never met another Jane her age before. That changed when she arrived at her dorm for the Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWhen I went up to my room, on the door was Jane from Memphis\u2014me\u2014and Jane from South Korea, my roommate,\u201d Mercer said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pairing roommates with the same name is a long-standing tradition, said head instructor Dr. Mary Lou Song.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mercer said the \u201cname twin\u201d surprise calmed her first-day nerves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The first few hours after check-in involved trips to Target for miscellaneous items forgotten at home and meeting fellow cherubs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After they said their tearful goodbyes to their parents, cherubs gathered in Fisk Hall for an informational session. There, Professor Roger Boye announced their first assignment, due in two hours: the roommate assignment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI thought we were going to do some bonding that night, like icebreakers,\u201d said Sara Ortiz, of Bayamon, Puerto Rico, who also shares a name with her roommate, Sarah Schwartz of Newton, Massachusetts. \u201cI did not expect they were going to put us to work so quickly.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sarah Schwartz said, \u201cInterviewing Sara for the assignment was really interesting because we saw a lot of crossovers but also places where our lives are pretty different.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After rushing to complete the roommate story, the cherubs walked back to Jones Hall where they sang \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d to Grace Lu of Weston, Connecticut.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cAlthough the first night was somewhat intimidating, I am grateful for the roommate story because it was an easy way to bond with my roommate very fast,\u201d said Chloe Eng of Manhasset, New York.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cherubs hurry to complete an assignment after move-in, ending the night with a birthday celebration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":9153,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[478],"class_list":["post-7807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":478,"user_id":265,"is_guest":0,"slug":"abigailstone","display_name":"Abigail Stone","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9427b460e6fd5e9355e2150fc971b345692eb7c8de768ff0ff39686edac63a26?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Stone","first_name":"Abigail","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7807"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10083,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7807\/revisions\/10083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7807"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}