Sophomore Year Me wasn’t quite as overwhelmed by the ASU sensory overload as Freshman Year Me was.
Sophomore Year Me knew how to get around campus while avoiding at least some of the flyers and petitions and yelling religious folks.
Right before school started, Sophomore Year Me sprained my ankle because I saw a roach. SO, Sophomore
Year Me was supposed to be on crutches and in a weird, ankle bracey thing, but crutches suck. Instead of
listening to the ankle doctor, Sophomore Year Me just walked around slightly gimpy for a while, which kind of
messed up my ankle.
Totally worth it, right?
On moving day, Sophomore Year Me took all my stuff to the Cholla Apartment Dorms, which were located
approximately 5 billion miles away from campus, then crammed it in a very tiny, very slow elevator, and shoved it
all in B 201.
Betsy and Rachul did the same, and in order to celebrate our newfound roommatery we decided to munch on
some food Rachul had brought from last semester. It was Honey Bunches of Delight—the kind with delicious
granola chunks that totally doesn’t even need milk to be good, which is awesome because milk is disgusting.
The kind you just eat right out of the box, except we didn’t. We poured a bowl so that we could easily access what was going to be a crunchy, munchy, honey bunch of yum.
Except it wasn’t. It was Honey Bunches of Bullshit, because Rachul brought a box somehow turned into a cockroach graveyard.
I don’t even think there was any cereal in there anymore. It was just a bunch of crispy, crunchy, fall-aparty cockroach corpses.
As someone who sprained her ankle as a result of trying to flee from a bug earlier this summer, this did not bode
well.
I was extremely suspicious of Rachul for about a month after this incident.
Man, that bowl was the best idea anyone ever had. Ever. Fuck you, wheels and electricity or airplanes.
You never kept me from a handful of bug corpses.
Then I met
She seemed pretty cool at first. Kind of weird, but that’s usually a good thing. I thought I had probably got the better end of the housing deal, since she seemed pretty laid back I figured it’d be like Lisa all over again.
Have you ever been so wrong about something that you just don’t understand how you came to that assumption
in the first place?
Sure, things started out innocently enough. We both liked Nightmare Before Christmas and went together to get
free smoothies at the Dutch Bros right by the dorm. We discussed ground rules for visitors and they were basically, “sure, do whatever” on both ends.
She joined a sorority and Sophomore Year Me almost joined it, too. See, Sophomore Year Me went through a
phase getting involved with something on campus seemed super important. Why a sorority sounded like the way
to do that, I can’t tell you. Probably because
sorority chick.
Sophomore Year Me even went
to one of the college parties she
got invited to and drank shitty
keg beer and slept on a stranger’s floor after venturing
out into a weird neighborhood
to a 7-11 for nourishment in the
middle of the night.
Well, things changed. And fast. At first
as hell.
Her sorority actually had one of the lowest GPAs in the school. Slowly but surely, though, she began to
assimilate. Maybe they were the Borg and the whole sorority thing was just a front.
Actually, I think she had an ocular implant and there was definitely an alcove underneath her loft bed.
She also nurtured a severe hatred for my boyfriend. Sophomore Year Me didn’t find out about this until much
later when she got really pissed and exploded, but apparently the “do whatever” rule was not working for her and
she felt Devin was around too much.
He was around a lot, but the entire fight thing probably could’ve been avoided if we had talked about it before she hated his guts. Or maybe made better rules.
Eventually, it got to the point where Devin and Sophomore Year Me had to sleep in the living room when he
came over and then she and I would have a night and day of bitchy text message fighting.
Since tensions were running high in my bedroom, Sophomore Year Me used to hang out in Betsy and Rachul’s
room a lot.
We went to a Wizard Rock Concert and made crazy YouTube videos and beat up Guitar Hero 3 bosses together.
We de-stuffed the couch cushions and used them to play as sumo wrestlers in the hallway.
The three of us would sit
around and IM each other
about the various things
Was that weird?
Probably.
But it kept us entertained.
From the various frat boys that spent the night, to the mysterious wine box which then turned into the mysterious
wine bag that we ransomed, to the many arguments she had with her sorority sisters and mom, Savannah was
having a lot of issues, especially with her mom, and somehow it came down to this:
I WANT A HAMSTER! NOT A GOLDFISH!
I think maybe it was about university housing versus living in the sorority house, but whatever the case having a
hamster, and not a goldfish was some serious shit.
Later, I found out she was probably as irritable as she was because she was on really strong anti-depressants that
weren’t working pretty much at all.
I fact, I found that out because I felt it was important to inform her when I got on my anti-depressants that I might be acting crazy for a month.
See, Sophomore Year Me went bat shit crazy.
It was a pretty stressful life, afterall.
Sophomore Year Me was a full time student with a part time job who was living with a really grumpy Borg.
Sophomore Year Me couldn’t eat things that were baked in an oven unless I went elsewhere, because the crazy,
Cholla oven burned half of everything.
Sophomore Year Me couldn’t sleep very well at night because B 201 was right next to the gate leading out of the
dorm complex.
That gate had a delightful little mechanism that made it bleat like a goat that died from eating 5 fire trucks but instead of digesting the fire truck alarms, they just sat in its stomach and wailed when Sophomore Year Me was trying to sleep.
This was to let everyone know that the gate was not shut so we wouldn’t get killed and turned into skin purses by
hobos who had a need for murder and high fashion.
Except no one really cared. And if you were standing outside of the gate without a key or a Sun Card to let you in, someone would let you in or prop the damn door open so that it could bleat all night.
And bleat it did.
Sophomore Year Me had a shitty job, a creaky and kinda crappy relationship that wasn’t going very well (we
even broke up for a whole week), an angry roommate, lots of homework, a really boring oral traditions class, a
strict schedule of bussing to get to and from work and my boyfriend’s house, and all those same worries from
Freshman Year.
Except now because there were cockroaches in my cereal and scary hobos everywhere and the change machine
in the laundry room never worked and someone puked over my balcony when we got drunk and we de-stuffed
the couch cushions to sit on them better so maybe we were going to get charged for that.
And we played Guitar Hero all night so maybe Sophomore Year Me was too tired to go to class.
Or trying to figure out how having a job would change my financial aid.
Or how to find food that wasn’t McDonalds.
Or a million other things.
Yeah. Sophomore Year Me really went off the deep end.
After a mixture of crying all the time, semi-paying attention in my Religions of the World class (mostly I was
ogling Professor Matt Correa. Seriously. If you go to ASU, check that guy out. Mmmph. Also, he teaches well),
and being lectured by my family doctor on the pressures of pre-marital sex and its effect on a young person’s
sanity, I ended up here:
Citalopram 20 mg, a generic pill for depression and anxiety.
I also got a tattoo.
And let me tell you, both of those things hurt like hell for the first month I had them.
Sophomore Year Me thought I
was crazy before getting on
medication, but it was nothing
compared to that first month of
“adjusting” to the pills
Sophomore Year Me didn’t even know wtf I doing on these pills since they seemed to be making things worse.
Sophomore Year Me was nauseous and angry and a little fatter and it felt like there was a fuzzy blanket on all of
my smarts and creativity and emotions.
And Sophomore Year Me
couldn’t write. As an English
major, this was problematic.
Whenever there was an essay
due, Sophomore Year Me
would skip a few pills and then
crank out an “A,” but it was a
bitch on my moods
These pills were a pile of suck that turned into a pile of Don’t-Give-A-Fucks. But, maybe that’s what it took to
get through another crazy year of college.
All in all, it was a big, crazy bunch of crap mixed with a lot of really awesome stuff.
It was my favorite year of college.
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