Bostwick 108-A: Margarita Hall
Wake Forest University. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1997.
Please be advised: in this essay exploring homesickness, there is an encounter with a friend who briefly describes her sexual assault.
I sat on my blue comforter on the top bunk in my dorm room, my brand new ThinkPad balanced on my lap, and wrote an email to one of my former camp counselors. I don’t know anyone here, I typed, seeking his familiar words of encouragement. When is this going to feel okay?
It was September 1997. All my whining about hating Columbia and South Carolina and wanting to get out of my hometown and my prison of a bedroom and there I was, a ball of loneliness in Bostwick dorm, feeling an unfamiliar kind of social anxiety I couldn’t name, not wanting to walk out of my door but knowing that I had to, just to try to break this homesickness apart.
When interacting with other people felt like too much, I retreated to my little nest with a chicken caesar salad from The Pit, consumed in my room, and wrote emails to all of my friends (for the first time! Emailing was brand new). I called my best friend Katie, one state away, who was also taken aback by the surprising loneliness she felt at her own school. I found some solace in my limited CD collection, and the internet was fresh and clean and I could listen to midi files of “We Built This City” and stumble upon articles about Rivers’ Cuomo’s sexcapades, and I was both revolted and fascinated by all this strange, eye-opening freedom.
I was knee-deep in the hoopla.
I arrived at college in Winston-Salem, North Carolina knowing barely anyone, but it wasn’t that I was alone in this fact or that I had no friends at all. For one, though, was my lackluster freshman hall, Bostwick 1A (in a couple of months I’d find out that it was known as “Margarita Hall” by my sorority sisters, and held special historical significance—more on that later). Our RA, the camaraderie, just the vibe, was pretty dull, or as they say these days, meh. I think partially it was because we were all so different, and forced attempts at fellowship seemed to fall flat. I remember our RA having to call a hall meeting about how we didn’t have a lot of “hall togetherness”, but she wasn’t great at pulling us all together, and we weren’t going to do it on our own. By the end of the semester, we’d had a lot of weird drama on our hall, and three girls were left without roommates. It was just another example of the bumpiness amongst us.
There was a small group of girls from Bostwick 2B I was palling around with, and a whole hall of guys in one of the other freshman dorms I was getting to know. My roommate (from Florida but more recently of Flagstaff, Arizona—a premonition to my later years) wasn’t my best friend but was pretty much fine. But some girls seemed so much better at meeting other people than I was. Some of them arrived at school having already decided that they were destined to be popular. And somehow they already knew a bunch of upperclassmen guys? How was this possible? Whatever the case, I knew I had a lot of catching up to do, but I was paralyzed.
Perhaps they’d participated in a pre-orientation week, like a backpacking or service trip with a handful of fellow freshman newbies, and had established a foothold in the WFU Class of 2001 popularity rankings. Silly me, who’d spent that time in Scotland with my high school associates! I missed Scotland and all the friends we’d made there. I missed (gasp!) high school. Primarily, a select group of friends who were cool, beloved, or both. The eye candy of a sweet set of A.C. Flora High School junior boys, who were obviously seniors now. Good for them.
The entry point to my foray into my New Life (™) actually originated in Scotland, however. I’d met another girl named Natalie* from Asheville over a breakfast buffet in the U.K. One of her fellow dramatists, a guy with glasses, had asked me where I was from. Me: South Carolina, but North Carolina’s better, to which he nodded in approval. When I told him I’d be starting at Wake Forest in just a week or so, he motioned over to a pretty girl with bangs and straight brown hair: That’s where Natalie’s going.
As luck would have it, we were in the same dorm, just a floor apart. Once on campus, I gravitated to her immediately, not only because she was kind and cool and I didn’t know anyone else, but I also so desperately needed to connect with someone who had just shared the life-changing experience of “Scotland!” with me, and I was still buzzing with what just happened and what did it all mean?!
And she brought me into her circle on 2B, which was very small, too, but she knew a guy who lived on a hall in Collins dorm, and some of us girls accompanied her to hang out with a dozen or so freshmen guys, and the rest was history. That’s how we got hooked up (pun intended?) with Collins 2B. That was my spot; those were my boys, for better and for worse, and before we’d go out to the fraternity parties (no one called them “frats;” we were classy), our pre-parties were epic, as only freshman boys can throw.
When my mom and I visited Wake Forest for the first time two summers prior, I knew I’d met The One.
I’d opted for a school “just far away enough” from home, and I didn’t have a car, and 3 hours was a good enough distance so that I could get home for important reasons, but didn’t have an excuse to do so often. Even as I was lonely and alone, I knew of other friends whose colleges were closer to their parents’ houses, who’d go home on the weekends, and frankly found it pathetic that they weren’t testing themselves like I was. Look at me! I’m so strong!
Homesickness be damned; I was pushing my limits and investing myself in my new community (whatever that meant). Except when it reminded me that I was just as weak as all those other freshmen at every college in the U.S. There’s simply no such thing as being “prepared enough” when you make the transition of leaving home at age 18.
The Wake Forest campus is set apart from the surrounding neighborhoods and busy commercial streets by a gatehouse that was rarely closed, but we still lived in our precious little bubble (“Wake Forest Universe,” we liked to say). You pull through the gates and drive up the wooded hill until you’re spilled out onto a grassy meadow, with the road curving past stately brick buildings, the library, the student center, the upperclass dorms, the resolute chapel, all harmoniously appointed, with oaks and ashes (now maples) and memorable magnolias scattered throughout, the scent of tobacco wafting through the breeze; it’s quintessential North Carolina.
Nowadays, when I think about the lovely campus and my time there, I can hold both the beauty and the pain in my heart at once. There was so much I was blinded to at the time. Uniformity. Privilege. Perfection. All of these played a starring role at The Universe. I’m sure they play a role at many, many other schools, for many, many other students. But there’s no conformity quite like Wake Forest conformity. Which, predictably, had nothing to do with academics, and was only beginning to reveal itself to me.
Making friends when everyone is new is such a strange thing. Friendship, at this point, was a utility, a method to not seem dorky and alone, and when you’re moving through that phase, almost anyone not-dorky will do. Only later can it be determined if these friends will make it to the next level. Even still, I complained (to myself) about how I barely had any girlfriends. Amongst the group of girls I hung out with during fall semester, almost none of them stuck around as friends afterwards, which made me realize that we had clung together only because we had no one else. I was guilty of it, too. When we all joined different sororities, I barely talked to some of those girls again. I accepted our divergence because it was easier to do so than attempt to maintain half a dozen flimsy, premature friendships. (It was a flaky way to be, but at least we were all flaky).
And primarily, I was blind to the transition between my old life and my new life. This was the very first time that it was happening to me; I was only a few months removed from that former life, and I was still that former person. I wasn’t sure how to cope with a feeling so unfamiliar.
I think the part that was most jarring was that this was where I chose to be, and still I was deeply uncomfortable. The idea that my parents’ house, the place I’d wanted to leave so badly, was more comfortable and familiar also upended what I thought I knew about myself. The homesickness and despondency, the sheer newness and unpredictability and simply the surprise of it all threw me for a loop. I had not anticipated having these feelings. I had been eagerly awaiting freedom, but now that I had it, I was overwhelmed.
If discomfort becomes routine, the norm, it can even feel safe. But this kind of discomfort felt new and dangerous. That, even while I had wanted to escape my house and my parents and my town, I was finding out that sometimes home isn’t exactly what you like or what you want it to be, but it’s what you know.
And I did not know this place. Not yet.
But I did know two people. One was Marla, a senior, who had been my camp counselor just a year before. The border of that relationship was blurred now, with us both in college. We got lunch and hung out a few times, but we were both incredibly busy. She was eternally kind and made time for me, and for that I am grateful.
The other one was Kit, a junior, who became my ticket to happiness and security at Wake. Kit’s little brother had been my best friend our last year in high school, and the summer before college I was still trying to deal with my unrequited feelings for him, even while he continued to stoke a flame underneath, much to my messed up heart. In the midst of that drama, Kit was the big brother I never had, the sweetest, most patient friend during our two years of overlap, particularly that first year.
He gave me juicy gossip on his brother, he was a sympathetic shoulder to cry on when I let the madness (or the alcohol) get the best of me, and he tolerated my multiple, sad-sack advances towards his best friends who mostly pushed the little lushy freshman girl away and, I might add, were also endlessly patient with me. His girlfriend, the most patient of all, was probably my favorite person at the time and she didn’t even go to our college.
(How many unseen eye rolls were made in my direction because of this? I don’t know. I was lovesick, I was desperate, I was overwhelmed by the possibility of all this fresh meat but also trying to reconcile my former life and all the unresolved, loose ends, and I needed to talk it out. I should have had a therapist at that point, probably).
And he was in a fraternity, which was a very nice bonus, because he invited me to parties and also made sure I was not taken advantage of in certain situations, which actually wasn’t that hard because most of the guys in that particular fraternity were pretty nice. And he introduced me to Kappa Deltas, which is probably at least partially why I ended up becoming one myself later on.
Even in the midst of this support, there was this feeling like I was perched on a precipice, and it could crumble at any second. All of this “social work” had to be maintained. It felt like if you were gone for a week, if you missed a party or fell off the radar for a short while, you were lost. Others had already moved on; there was the sense of always having to keep up.
Academics-wise, I was trying to decide whether I would major in theatre, Anthropology, or English. The theatre felt comfortable, but I needed a break. I was burnt out from the year leading up to Scotland, and also felt like I wasn’t ready to bond with a whole new set of theater-nerds, who would not have been as weird and precious as the other theater nerds I was missing.
I took two Anthropology classes that fall, and was fascinated by the adventuresome possibilities of both cultural and physical anthropology, which played into my childhood fantasies of becoming Indiana Jones (a more sensitive version, of course). I still wonder what direction my life would have taken had I chosen to major in Anthro, but I don’t think it would have been that far from what it is now; I just have a different outlet than research digs in the desert. One of the classes, my freshman seminar, was an anthropological study in itself: out of an intimate class of 10 students + 1 professor (a male), I was the only female. That experience was an awakening in sheer intimidation and also lust, and I do hope, for at least those two reasons, that freshman seminars are a little more evenly divided these days.
So the girl who doesn’t like to make decisions chose English, primarily for its vagueness and familiarity and not particularly because I liked to read and write, though there was that. And I learned quickly that just because a subject is familiar doesn’t mean it will be easy to follow.
One night in mid-October, Natalie came to see me. She confided that she had been sexually assaulted by someone she had gone out with. I don’t remember all the details, but the story was brand new to me. It seemed so unreal.
I wrote in my journal:
It’s so ironic that in Health that same day this girl who spoke to us said that we’re going to know at least one person during college who gets date-raped. And I’ve only been in college two months...I’m going to try to help her out SOMEHOW. I don’t know what to do though. I was so glad to see her, we’ve been having the same kind of college experience, although mine might actually be a little bit better.
Date-raped. Because that’s what it was called, in 1997, when a guy you knew, at least in a sort-of way, forced intercourse on you. We were told it was a lot less scary—and therefore more palatable—than being raped by a stranger. Those words reminded us that we should be grateful that it wasn’t someone who broke in and did it in the dark. At least he had a familiar face. Well, thank our lucky stars!!
I wanted to help Natalie, I felt desperate, and this was very, very real. I didn’t know what to do. All I could think about was if Natalie was going to be okay.
Natalie told me that she’d made him wear a condom, and I was relieved. At least she wouldn’t end up pregnant, or worse. But this fact also made me realize that she might not be believed that it was actually rape. And, to be honest, a tiny, shaky glimmer in me doubted, too, driven by the fact that I didn’t want to believe that if it happened to her, it could happen to me. I wasn’t getting asked out on any dates, so as long as I didn’t walk alone at night and I held my keys a certain way, I would be fine. Right?
No wonder that it took so many of us so many years to question whether certain things that had happened in college had meant we’d been “date-raped”, too.
God, the 90s. I love you, but you fucked us up.
The melodrama of that first semester was both real and illusory; real because, as the aforementioned incident illustrates, there were real actions with real consequences. Choices we made (or that were sometimes made for us) shaped the rest of our college experience. Natalie ended up being “okay”, I thought, but we never talked about it again. I regret my inattention after the initial shock had passed. I don’t know how it affected her, months, or even years later.
But the overall drama of college in general was also contrived because, as many of us know, the discomfort, much of which was my own making, was bound to be temporary. I realize now how self-centered I was. Maybe there was no way around it. I am at my most needy when I’m in a new place and searching for my new identity in it, and this was the first major time I experienced that. Combined with the fact that I was 18 and expected the world to be open to me, it stands to reason that I would be wanting more more more and that all the love and support I could get from my friends was never enough. And I didn’t have as much to give at that time because I was so unmoored and in such an uncomfortable position.
But I don’t want to trivialize the experience–as older, wiser adults, it feels wrong to cluck our tongues at the frivolity of youth, or think that everyone’s tough time is just like our tough time. It’s definitely not. Many shared my experiences, yes, but please, I was at an elite institution with all sorts of resources at my disposal. (I may not have taken advantage of enough of them, but I feel that I share some of the blame for that).
I also can’t look back at that time without some measure of sympathy for myself, for that young woman going through a very new time that, while a rite of passage, remains inherently difficult and was oftentimes unsettling. I want to be as gentle with myself, and by extension, with others facing new and challenging circumstances, whatever they may be. So I think I’m allowed to have this one small thing: this homesickness upon a cliff I’d only just approached. It’s not a struggle that compares to struggles others have had, but it was a struggle nonetheless.
Knowing where you want to be–and then finding yourself there–isn’t a guarantee that the ride will be comfortable, or even fun. Maybe there are moments of comfort and moments of fun (walking around campus at night and seeing the stars, figuring out which professors I liked, drinking Goldschlager for the first—and only—time), but overall, the uncertainty overshadows those moments. It’s not that the choice was wrong; it just takes time to adjust, and you don’t know what you don’t know, right? In retrospect, I was settling in and finding my place, I just didn’t love the process of it. I expected to be comfortable immediately, but that just wasn’t possible.
It wasn’t truly home for me, and that’s what defined that first semester. The homesickness, the unfamiliarity, the newness, the loneliness, the discomfort. The fact that I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was trying to retain and reconcile my quirky high school self with a completely new beast of a place. I was still sporting my Delia’s wardrobe and tiny Weezer t-shirts and clunky shoes in a dressed-up, prepped-up campus culture, and I quickly learned that that wasn’t what it was like here.
I wasn’t sure who I was or who I wanted to be, and while there have been many other moments like that in my life since, this one felt the sharpest.
Deep down, though, I knew I was never going to give up. That wasn’t an option I even cared to entertain. Sure, the newness and unfamiliarity was scary, but I had hope it would get better. I would just have to learn to be stronger, and fake it if I wasn’t ready yet. I would meet the challenges of academics and I would embrace the challenges of my social life. This is what I knew I would do and I was down for it. I knew I could handle this twist in the journey—I just had to accept the uncomfortable rebirth portion of it before I could fully embrace The New Me.
Before the start of the spring semester, I came back to campus early for sorority Rush, and by the end of the week, I had pledged Kappa Delta along with two other girls on my hall. I found out that Bostwick 1A had been the birthplace of the precursor to Kappa Delta on the WFU campus; a society called Lynks. And because of the camaraderie and spirit of those girls who lived there back in the 80s, it had been known as Margarita Hall. Even though my own experience there didn’t feel particularly chummy, it also felt like fate, a retroactive sign that both places—Bostwick and KD—were where I was meant to be.
And just a few weeks later, I was standing in the Davis Hall courtyard with my 39 fellow pledges—mostly other freshman women, with a handful of sophomores scattered in—candy necklaces around our necks, cheerily getting sprayed with beer, accompanied by pleasant heckling from upperclassmen sisters who rained the alcohol down on us from the balconies above. We all barely knew one another, but in the absurdity of the moment, we grabbed hands, hugged, laughed at the unintelligible songs and cheers echoing across the courtyard and thought, What in the world did we just say yes to?
Kappa Delta—was this my home now?
I didn’t have the answer yet. But this was just the beginning.
Reflection questions:
What do you remember about your first semester of college (if you did not attend college, what do you remember about being 18 years old)?
Have you ever felt homesick in a way that surprised you? How did you cope with this uncomfortable feeling, and did something good (or bad) come out of it?
When does a place truly feel like home?
Wake Forest University is situated in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on the land of the Tutetolo, Occaneechi, and Keyauwee nations.
*Name has been changed.
Image: Photos from my freshman year album.
My homesick struggle has suprisingly come with marriage, not college. It has nothing to do with the amazing man I married or the house we work hard to provide for our family, but the totally different area I live in now. Being raised in the Appalachias and now living in MB is totally a 180. I had community back "home." Here, everyone is from somewhere else and I struggle to call it home.