Word: stoughtone
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...have never met anyone at Harvard able to match my tales of the people who lived in Stoughton my freshman year. Person for person, they were psychos. Zozo and Yarco, Stoughton's hulky Cuban sentinels, pouncing upon each girl as she entered the dorm: "What did you do tonight?" (Avuncular whine) "Who were you with?" (Leer) "Were his roommates there?" (Snicker) "A lady wouldn't do that." (Dismissed); Rob, the awestruck and disoriented Midwestern roommate of the Death Poet, wandering about sadly, latching onto anyone who would listen, occasionally making conversation with the two calculator-addled physics jocks who haunted...
...should have known--Stoughton should have warned me. I pored over the mammoth course catalog, marvelling at its range and breadth. Foundering, I decided to take my proctor's advice and fulfill my requirements first. I groped for some sense of direction and settled on the survey courses--I'll read everything from Plato to Marx, I thought excitedly. Then I went to my first class, and fought for standing room with hundreds of other people. I listened (there were too many people to see) as the professor told us to fill out index cards; she would select and admit...
...University Health Services, a nurse told me I had to take the exam anyway and sent me back to Stoughton. By now I was really desperate. I would fail my exams and all that frantic studying would be as useless as the entire first semester. After shivering by myself for an hour, I finally gave in and woke up a friend across the hall who sent me to stand, shaking, under the shower until the exam. I took it in a complete stupor, barely aware of what I was writing. I begged my section leader for mercy, staggered home, slept...
...Crimson. I still felt lonely, and sporadically angry, but I was often too busy to sulk. I took some more couses on Asia, and discovered that one actually made me think, as opposed to regurgitate. Eventually, I became an East Asian Studies major. While I still hated Stoughton, I discovered that laughing at the crazies made them less threatening, and I found two women there who eventually became my best friends. Ellen and I even worked out a cautious detente--she realized that I was not a preppie socialite and I began to see what was underneath her eccentricities...
Spring term reading period came, and I didn't panic too much. I had at least twice the amount of work to do, but ended up doing twice as well. My exams over, I walked back to Stoughton to pack, ecstatic at the thought of leaving the dorm that symbolized for me all the horrors of the year. No more Campfire Girls parties, with shrieking women and very drunk jocks; no more science nerds scuttling around nervously; no more of Chuck's inanities. No more freshman year, with that painful sense of being different...