College can be intimidating, probably no more so than on that first day. The family has come, dropped everything off, and left. And while that adolescent part of you is happy to see them go before anyone can figure out that they belong to you, some much younger part of you wishes their hands were still there to hold.
My first day didn't start too badly. Nothing was forgotten at home. I'd met one of my new roommates, and, aside from the stuffed animals and unicorn posters, she seemed highly tolerable. She was out touring the campus with her parents, and I'd already made plans to meet her later at Matriculation. This gave me a chance to unpack.
I finished and looked around. I had my books and my own desk, my new roommate had brought a small fridge, and the window by my bed looked out over a small green courtyard. All in all, the outlook for college wasn't too bad.
I headed out to matriculate. And the door wouldn't open. I fiddled with the deadbolt and could hear that it wasn't turning. Shaking the door and swearing at it produced similar outcomes.
Eventually, feeling as stupid as I have ever felt in my life (anyone else remember junior high?), I called the one phone number I had been given on campus to tell them I was locked in my dorm room. Security was very helpful and said they'd get a maintenance guy out ASAP -- which, translated into real time, meant about an hour. I passed the hour with a book.
When the guy showed up, he asked me to pass him the key under the door. The lock behaved perfectly. I felt stupid again, but I was free . . . or could be if I didn't mind leaving the maintenance guy with no way to relock my door when he was done. I went back to my book.
The guy whistled when he had the lock taken apart. "There was an extra washer in here; I don't know why." (Yes, my memory is capable of supplying semicolons even to angels disguised as maintenance guys.) "It keeps the lock from turning, like this. According to the records, no one has worked on this lock since spring. This room was used over the summer, so you can't possibly have been the first person trapped in here. I wonder why no one else called us?"
All of which is a roundabout, hopefully entertaining, way of telling you not to forget to speak up for yourself while you're at college. Question things that don't seem right, don't seem to work. And when you feel stupid -- which is inevitable in college, as in life -- you can remember the people who lived in the room before I did, who made stupid a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Now, does anyone want to tell me what I missed at Matriculation?
