For someone who likes to be in motion, coming to college was a hard move.
When I drove to UNC, six hundred miles on the road carried me away from everything I knew. Six hundred miles separated me from every single person I’d met in my eighteen years of life. Six hundred miles was the split between me and my brothers, my family and the streets of my hometown — from everything that was familiar.
I guess I’d seen too many college movies because it turns out my expectations for move-in day were a little too lofty. People spilling out of cars, laughing and lively, knocking on door after door to meet all the neighbors — I thought it would be like that in August. And, not surprisingly, it was completely different. I mean, I knew no one at the entire University, but I thought everybody’s door would be open. Right?
Well, it was more difficult than that.
Those of us not from North Carolina had it a little different in the first few weeks of school. There was the culture shock, for one; I thought people were asking me for “pins” all week when it turned out they actually wanted something to write with. I had never heard of half the brand names before — Rainbows? Jack Rogers? And after people rushed to tell me about the famous milkshakes at Cookout, I mistakenly called it Campout for my entire first month.
But it wasn’t those differences that made my transition difficult. It wasn’t even the geography, though the Jersey Shore jokes got old after week one. (They’re all New Yorkers on that show, I swear!). No, the boundaries between me and everyone else were quieter than that, comprised less of lines on maps and more of ties between high school friends I’d never share.
Being out-of-state at UNC doesn’t mean much to the in-staters, who comprise 80-something percent of the student body. “Where are you from?” is just a question that gets asked in the ‘getting-to-know-you’ stage of the game, a passing query whose answer is soon forgotten. They don’t really understand what it’s like to come here empty-handed, without connections.
It’s hard to start from zero. To have no crutch, no sense of the familiar — it’s difficult, especially when juggling a class load unlike anything high school pushed our way. The first few weeks bring faces and faces and faces, unceasing names, all unfamiliar. I felt anonymous in the mix. It seemed like I was on the edge of a lot of things, like I wasn’t quite visible yet. Instead of instant best friends, which was a ridiculous thing to expect in the first month of school, there were awkward relationships forged in the dining hall. I was disappointed. College was supposed to make you fall in love, and I didn’t right away.
It got easier, though. As soon as I realized that making friends meant actively working on friendships, I suddenly had a crowd around me. Somehow along the way, I met people who knew people who knew people, and the names started to become more familiar. As the weeks rolled by, I realized that Chapel Hill isn’t a big school if you don’t treat it like one. As my phone contacts and Facebook friends increased exponentially, my group of real best friends here grew as well. I didn’t feel alone anymore. In fact, I felt flooded. It was what those 80’s movies were made of.
So, though I have still yet to try a Bojangles’ biscuit, I’ve adapted to Chapel Hill pretty quickly. “Y’all” is now a regular word in my vocab, and I’m working on my shag dancing skills. (I’m not too bad, or so I think). I love my late nights here, my new friends and our adventures. Chapel Hill feels cozier to me than my hometown.
You know, there’s an adage about being in a plane and looking down at the borderless land below — because when you’re in the sky, there are no lines to separate one state from another. From above, towns flow into towns and states into states, devoid of boundaries. It doesn’t matter where you’re from when borders are invisible.
It feels like I’m in that plane now, unbounded and unconfined by geography. It doesn’t matter if I’m a New Jerseyan or a North Carolinian because, at the heart of it all, I’m a Tar Heel. We’re all connected in the Carolina blue.