First post from Chicago. I’ve arrived here in Chicago. I’ve arrived. The process of ending my summer was tough and somewhat exhausting. And the first few days here in Chicago have been exciting and somewhat exhausting I’m exhausted.
Yesterday after arriving in Chicago I got to meet my new roommates, whom I had previously only stalked over facebook. Facebook had told me that I would have two tri delta sisters and a track star from Grinnel as my roommates. Emma let me into my room and gave me my key and packet. I met and greeted most of the other Urban Studies students living in the apartment, made light jokes and then promptly forgot everyone’s names right away.
There were many seemingly trivial but actually important tasks that I undertook my first day, including but not limited to:
Dividing up drawers
Arranged bedroom furniture
Unpacked all furniture.
Set up books
Woke Emma from nap w/ dumb questions on camera
Locating washer and dryer in basement
Deciding washer and dryer basement gives me the heebie jeebies
Tour with Miss Dorothy around Hyde Park.
Shared Chicago deep dish pizza with roomies
Arranged desk set up in living room.
Rearranged desk set up.
And rearranged it… and rearranged it…
Homework…. Homework? WT…
Called mom from bathroom
Clogged toilet, hung up on mom, snuck plunger out from the girl’s bathroom.
Miss Dorothy Burge, our precinct host, seems to me to be a very special person. Those of us living in Hyde Park were gathered to meet with her on the first day. We saw her approach from the window dressed all in loose, swishing light purple fabric.
When she entered the room I imagined that a comforting presence came over all of us. She never raised her voice, or had to use any of the humor or theatrics that people might usually use to convince a new group of people to listen to what they had to say. She just spoke to us in calm yet impassioned sentences that we all followed with rapt attention.
Of course, I might have been the only one so thrilled by Miss Dorothy, but I certainly thought everyone was equally taken by her. At least for me, I think that the power of her speech might’ve come from the way that her voice seems to carry the wisdom of her experiences. Each thoughtful word that she pronounces seems to contain the very essence of her history.
But I must also acknowledge my own particular circumstances as I was listening to Miss Dorothy. At that moment, that very time in my life, I was about to live in a city that was larger and greater than anything I’ve ever had to contend with before. I had lived in the same house in Portland all my life, had gone from private school to a liberal arts college. I had just begun my junior year of school and had just began my education as a Comparative Literature major, and I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. How could I? I had never had anything that I could call a Real Life Experience. I hadn’t accomplished anything in the Real World; I hadn’t even dipped my toe in it yet. Not really.
And now? Haha, I haven’t exactly waded into the Real World yet, don’t get me wrong. I’ve managed public transportation here so far— that’s definitely some valid Real Life Experience right. But during that moment on my first day in Chicago I was being spoken to by Miss Dorothy and her every experience, and I could begin to see my own broad future approaching. With it, the eventuality of my own experience coming into focus.
