I NEVER THOUGHT college would be this weird. I mean, I was excited about it leading up to the big move but I didn’t really know what to expect apart from what you see in movies. None of my close friends, of which I had few, went to the same college as me so it was like I was going off on this new adventure all by myself. Nobody knew me, I could reinvent myself if I wanted, I could be a totally new person and carve out a completely different path if I so chose. But once I got to school, I found that I simply couldn’t help but be me. Nerdy, introverted, freaky me.

Nerdy Jennie. Lucky I ended up in the same small arts dorm with all the other nerdy outcasts and not in one of the huge student ghettos filled with roving bands of bleached bimbos looking for an easy target like me to sink their teeth into. No, as an English major I had been asked by some benevolent cosmic force if I would like to enroll in the residential college for Arts & Letters students and without even knowing much about the program I dutifully accepted. The program was called ALOHA, which stood for Arts & Letters Organized Housing Association, and it was a total lifesaver for a girl like me.

My dorm was quite small, being one of the oldest dorm buildings on campus, and was only three floors high as opposed to some of those much larger skyscraper dorms that peppered the huge campus of my midwestern farm school. It was like we had our own little sanctuary where we could just be us. All kinds were welcome but it was an overwhelmingly Nerdy atmosphere. I liked that. But, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t prepared for the level of geekiness. Much different than high school. These students had much more passion. More spunk.

The beauty about my dorm, Leopold Hall, was that the entire student population within its walls were ALOHA students. It really was like we were on some island. Some island for weirdos. Totally awesome.

So when I say that I never thought college would be this weird, I mean weird in a good way. Strangely exciting. Different. Filled with possibility and acceptance and with very limited, if any, judgment from peers. We were all just there doing our own thing. English majors and writers like myself, theater students, visual artists, the outcast art crew. It was a terrific amalgam of my university’s creative contingent and it was nothing like I had anticipated. Utopia, almost.

And the things that happened to me, well, I couldn’t have anticipated them either.

Each floor of Leopold Hall housed a different year of ALOHA students. So the freshmen like me were on the first floor, sophomores on the second, and juniors on the third. The third floor was much smaller than the other two floors and was all single rooms, rather than the doubles that the freshman and sophomores got. And generally that was fine because by the third year many students drifted away from ALOHA. I could see that it was a good program to start out in, to help you get adjusted to college life, but by the

time you’re a junior you want to live off campus, spread your wings and all that. The way the years were laid out in the dorm worked out swimmingly. Girls on one side of each floor, boys on the other.

And my roommate, Jisoo, was a blast.

“You know what’s awesome?” asked Jisoo, sitting on the couch under our lofted beds wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, her brunette hair twisted up tightly into a bun. Jisoo was an outgoing theater major and I was happy to have been paired with her.

“What’s awesome?” I asked, sitting sideways in my desk chair, avoiding working on a paper for my English class.

“I felt like, in high s