I will never forget my first day as an Ole Miss Rebel. High school graduation had long left my mind, and the new memories of orientation flooded it. I didn’t have a roommate yet. I had no idea what the “cool” sororities were, much less where a single building was where my classes would be located.
No idea.
I’d driven alongside my parents, with every crevice of our cars filled with everything a freshman who’s about to leave mom and dad for the first time ever might need. But I was nervous. My stomach turned. I had to pull off on the median and throw up, terrified of what I was getting myself into.
I didn’t know a single person here, and I thought I’d made a mistake. I met my two roommates in Martin for the upcoming school year, unsure how to act, with a faint touch of awkward. I come from a small town called New Albany, Mississippi, next door to Oxford, and my roommates were different than anyone I’d ever been exposed to, yet had longed to discover.
Then there was rush. It was all I heard girls on my floor talking about, but they used words like ‘recruitment, Gamma Chi’s and PNM’s’ that I’d never heard before. All I knew was, it must be a hell of a deal.
I didn’t decide until the weekend the deadline closed that I would take part in this foreign shindig and all of the things that followed. Then, when rush week rolled around, my mouth dropped at the things I saw – girls crying as if a family member had died when they got their house invites back, the rumors of Martin and other dorms going on suicide watch due to the severity rush week brought.
I found my home and stuck with it. The swaps and spring parties were never really the thing for me, but everything I wanted to get out of it, I got.
On the weekend of Halloween, I moved out of my freshman dorm and commuted for the rest of the semester due to roommate problems. Those happen. Some meet their best friend from the luck of the draw. I, unfortunately, was not one of those.
Things started to feel heavy. I didn’t feel like I mattered in a place like Ole Miss. My walks to class felt lonely and awkward, not to mention my occasional stop at the Union, where I would dart out of the front doors the second I got something to eat, in fear of sitting or eating by myself.
It gets better. You will get way too rowdy at football games, locking arms with the girl or guy next to you. Not caring about how you look “locking the Vaught,” you’ll eat way too much Ajax and crawfish with your friends during spring parties, and you’ll finish your first finals wondering how you ever did it.
You might fall asleep walking to class. Your dorm fire alarm will be pulled a dozen times. You’ll oversleep, procrastinate, and learn the meaning of “Hotty Toddy.”
You’ll procrastinate. You will remember the reason you chose this beautiful school over a handful of others.
My last words as a senior: You’re going to blossom as long as you stay true to who you are.
Olivia Wells can be reached at otwells@go.olemiss.edu. Her work can be read on Oxford Stories Longform.
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