First day is always a roller coaster of emotion

I was sick. The humidity added a thick, sticky fog to the air. Earlier that morning, my boyfriend and I had said our goodbyes to each other before he left for school hundreds of miles away, and before I left for Ann Arbor.

To say the least, my first day as a Michigan student was rough.

Over the summer, I had never heard from my future roommate. Although I had written to her once, she never responded. What did she think of me? Was she trying to change her room assignment at that very minute?

As optimistic as I was, I became increasingly skeptical about what college life at Michigan would have in store for me.

But, of course, I was too stubborn, ambitious and determined to let it show.

So we arrived in front of my new home, Couzens Hall, where a procession of my brothers, cousins and aunts helped me carry my junk up to the sixth floor - the Penthouse it was called.

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Still, no sign of my roommate, although one side of the room already contained her belongings. Finally she came, this unfamiliar person with whom I was going to share a 10- by 12-foot room for the entire school year.

Eventually, my parents asked me if I wanted them to stay for the evening.

As much as I had dreamed of the day I would be on my own, tears welled up in my eyes and choked my words. But, "Go," I said. "You know you don't have to worry about me."

So they left, and I was alone with my new life.

I still remember waking up the next morning in my new twin bed, glancing out the window at a scene I would eventually be able to describe in detail, and feeling so strange that this small space was all I had to occupy - and not even to myself.

My roommate had arrived several days earlier for fall orientation, so she already had her friends.

I settled in with the thought that we wouldn't become best friends.

Recalling some of the horror stories I had heard from other friends and relatives about college roommates, I simply hoped we could tolerate living together.

After having so many "What's-your-name and where-you-from?" conversations, a huge pack of us (we never traveled in groups of less than 10 back then) went to the Michigan Union where we mingled with half of the freshman class over free sandwiches and drinks.

Well, one would think the night progressed nicely, but fortunately it didn't.

I say fortunately because I'm grateful for the first night I had. As the evening progressed, I felt increasingly worse - so unsettled that I ended up walking back to Couzens alone that night and sobbing on the phone to my mom and my boyfriend. I'm fairly certain that at that point my roommate thought she had been handed a complete loser, considering I had turned down going to a party to walk back to our room at 10:30 p.m.

But guess what? Having such an emotionally intense experience was probably one of the best things that could have happened. It put all of my experiences into perspective.

It made me appreciate what eventually went right.

The next morning I woke up, and you know what, it was a completely new day - a day that potentially could have an entirely different ending.

As it turns out, my roommate from freshman year is one of my closest friends. In fact, she's still my roommate. Before classes even started, home became the furthest thought from my mind.

Just that one night was awful, but the rest was anything but awful. This is not to say there weren't any down points during the year.

The boyfriend I thought I was going to marry? Well, we broke up before Christmas. And although I absolutely hate to acknowledge this, I earned my first C in a class. But I wouldn't change a moment, not a single moment.

The big picture was far too grand.

I even lost my focus. I became more confused about what to do with myself than ever before in my life.

I was still the same old ambitious, determined individual, but I didn't know how to direct my newly developed passions and energies.

I met people that made me laugh hysterically. People who placed the utmost importance on embracing every minute of life - from going out and dancing until 3 a.m., to pulling an all-nighter to earn that A, to striking up the most stimulating conversations built on tangent upon tangent.

I met people who made me re-evaluate the way I thought about life's most perplexing questions and egregious problems. People whose backgrounds were nothing like mine, yet we seemed to have countless commonalities.

We felt that sense of undefinable, shared uniqueness found only in the friendships, loves, hardships, knowledge and music of freshman year. Sometimes - when I was truly blessed - I met friends who did all of those things.

True, in print, my freshman year may sound similar to the experiences of nearly thousands of other Michigan students as they reflect on their first year in Ann Arbor.

The same adjustment, learning and progress.

But that is the beauty of the experiences that lie directly in front of you, for they cannot be rivaled. Those experiences occur at a pivotal point in your life.

Whether good or bad, they serve as catalysts for greater fervor and growth, for more laughs and tears, for deeper love and loss. The experiences will be there to challenge you.

Rise to meet them.

- Katie Plona is a Daily news reporter. She can be reached via e-mail at kplona@umich.edu.

09-08-98