Everyday I wake up and sit up to look out my window at FT. Bright green consumes my eyes as I take in the wavering palm tree whose fronds brush up against the window pane to the rhythm of the sea breeze. Just beyond the palms is the field where the elementary school children are skipping about on their way to school. Behind them lay the ocean who modestly waves to me as if she doesn’t know her own beauty.
After heading downstairs I use the sleeve of my jacket to wipe the morning dew from my bike seat. I take off swiftly into the brisk air as the rising morning sun beats upon my back. I am often winded once I make it to class and try to slow my breathing as I enter into the lecture hall, but still my heart vibrates in my ears. I smile at the tired faces of my friends as they call me over to sit with them. Numbers and letters dance across the page of my notebook and set my mind in a frenzy. Nicoletti’s coffee causes my pen to shake, but at least I’m awake.
The day grows warmer and the faces brighter. The glittering new library seems to beckon me in. Silence greets me though I hardly recognize it… the library is perhaps the only place in the surrounding area that is truly silent in its correct definition. The tapping of keys upon keyboards is the only music that fills the air.
After an hour or so I stroll through the Arbor towards my bike. Solicitors come at me from all directions, begging me to sign up for this and pleading me to pledge myself to that. I smile at them in the way that you smile at someone when you haven’t heard what they said. Often they look confused. This is when I just nod and proceed to walk toward the horizon. A long bike ride home awaits me.
At Portola I tend to sit for hours, picking at my painfully mediocre food. I seem to be stuck in a time warp there where everything moves so quickly. So many people come and go before my eyes, and before I know it it’s 8 o’clock. I’ve been sitting in the same place for two and a half hours. Dizzied by the commotion, I head up stairs to the warm and tender embrace of my extra-long twin bed and fall asleep to the soothing voice of Don Draper from Mad Men because, what is a day without Netflix? Shortly after I am awoken by harmonious laughs and screams that echo through the halls from the drunk mouths of partygoers who are attempting to stumble their way home. I open my door just a crack to see what the commotion is. My swollen eyes open just enough to read the sign hanging crookedly upon the wall across from me: “Welcome to Freshman Year.”