I’m starting to think that not living on campus
with all the other kids is going to suck.
Background story: I hated living in
Clemson/Central. It was horrible. The university is the town and that doesn’t
do you much good when you don’t like the university to begin with. It was way
too country even for my decidedly southern tastes: when you, like me, are
without a vehicle and the nearest mall is 20+ minutes away and all the frat
parties are in Anderson along with said mall you’re in for a miserable 4 years.
Yes, the easiest solution to that problem is to
make friends with cars but don’t act like y’all don’t know I didn’t make many
friends in college (and to the few I had, I was rather expendable). There. I
said it. Are you happy now?
That aside, I was pretty stoked when I figured
out that the MBA program was in Greenville. It’s right downtown, and it’s
exactly 11 minutes from my driveway to the parking garage so I didn’t have to
deal with all the crap I begrudgingly dealt with in undergrad (and am still
bitter over). Plus, at the time I thought that all my friends from high school
that I still keep in touch with were coming home after graduation like I was.
Who needs to make new friends when your old friends are 15 minutes up the
highway? Not me.
And then I figured out that I’m the only one
staying here. Everyone else is teaching English overseas or going to grad
school out of state or getting jobs and moving to DC/LA (I’m looking at you,
Nina and Stacey). All of my other friends who are in Clemson for grad school
are residing in Orange Hell because the MBA program is the only one in
Greenville. In short, I have two of my besties from middle school and my
mother.
This was not the plan.
So now I have to actually put in the effort to
meeting people in the graduate program, only I’m not so sure that’s going to
work for several reasons. Reason #1: they’re all older than me and some of them
are married. Reason #2: I think I missed out on the “clique forming” part of
orientation. Reason #3: I am painfully shy. Don’t make that face. I really am.
The prospect of talking to strangers in a purely social setting terrifies me.
In my head I coach myself before I say hello. It’s that bad. Social butterfly,
I am not (until you get to know me). Reason #4: I can’t really join clubs.
Explanation to #4 is below.
All of the clubs except for the MBASA (Master
of Business Administration Student Association) are headquartered on Clemson’s
campus. The clubs I was in in undergrad are on campus, Greek life is all on
campus (for people my age), and so is everything else that I could possibly do
with other people who are relatively where I am in life. Here’s an example: I
recently learned via email that there’s a Black Graduate Student Union. There’s
also a Black Student Union for undergrads, but I didn’t know it existed until I
was a senior. “Awesome,” I thought as I read the email. “I can meet other
(Black) grad students (because there are so few others in my classes)!”
And then I saw the time and place of the first
meeting. 5 PM. On campus. Do you know what I’m doing at 5 PM? I’m picking my
mother up from work. I don’t have a car of my own and I have to get to school
somehow, so I take her to work in the mornings and use her car to go to class.
If class ends at 4:45, her job is 20 minutes from home/class and it takes about
45 minutes for me to get to Clemson, what is the earliest time I could arrive
at said meeting?
If you guessed 6:05 PM at the very earliest,
you’d pretty much be right.
It’s almost the same story with the MBASA.
Meetings are in Greenville, which is nice, but they’re at 5 PM. I’m doomed, I
tell you. Doomed. Someone get me lots of cats and a musty old house.
Right about now would be a pretty good time to
be living with mass transit (God bless the CAT bus) and other Clemson students.
You have no idea how much that pains me to
admit.
And I will never, ever say it again.
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