And so it begins. The beginning of the end.
Three years have really flown by. I know it seems cliche, but it seems like only yesterday that I was auditioning and filling out college applications. So much has changed in three years.
By Daniella Choynowski
Center Spread Editor
And so it begins. The beginning of the end.
Three years have really flown by. I know it seems cliche, but it seems like only yesterday that I was auditioning and filling out college applications. So much has changed in three years.
I’d never even heard of this school before December 2005. I did a mass audition for a scholarship and a bunch of prospective schools at the 2005 State Thespian Conference. Things happen for a reason, and my name made it onto the accepted students list for Seton Hill.
I remember crying my eyes out after “Into the Woods,” my final show with my high school friends. You say you’re going to stay in touch, but you know what happens.
My two best friends in high school are still two of my best friends, but they’re about the only people I still am in contact with from Penn Manor.
The thing is, I’m not worried about not seeing my college friends after graduation. College is a different boat: we live together. We go through all the same experiences. We’ve been through so much in the past three years.
My ex-roomate, whom I am still good friends with, put up with me locking myself out of the room at least once a day (I am not even kidding), every day. There were muddy steps up the outside wall of first floor DeChantal from me entering the room like Spiderman. I think that locking-yourself-out fine was because of me. I was on a first-name basis with the campus police.
Even if I didn’t show it all the time, I loved it all:
Putting out fires that I may or may not have started to begin with
The often ridiculous fines.
The getting stuck in the elevator.
That hilarious almost-car crash sophomore year.
The trips to see shows in Pittsburgh and beyond (with often hilarious results).
Late nights in St. Mary’s for various projects.
My first main-stage show.
Learning how to sing without belting my brains out (how I’ve grown in just three short years).
The time Amtrak had to back the train up to the station because I didn’t get off in time.
The sewing parties.
The cabarets (impromptu or planned).
The trips to Gabes to play dress-up.
The sitting in Starbucks for hours after finals were over.
Secret Santa.
Pretty much being forced to get a Facebook, then becoming addicted.
Building a fort in the dorm room for no reason and then having a battle.
The random cartoons I’d find on my door,
“The April Fool”
Valentine’s Day nonsense.
The terribly awesome and awesomely terrible books I had to read for classes.
The trifecta of desperation.
Steve Clemens shouting “spider being” at me every day so loud that I’d jump three feet in the air and all the rest of it.
There were bad times too: commiserating about how stupid boys are, deaths in families, parental problems, an operation, personality conflicts and mutual over-stressness (I just made that word up) from the mountains of work we had to do.
But when I think about when we graduate next May, I don’t tear up. Why? Because, as the legendary Facebook bumper sticker decrees,
“I’ve learned that your college friends become a kind of family. You eat together, and have movie all nighters. You laugh; you cry; you fight; you do absolutely nothing together until you cannot seem to remember how you ever lived your life without them.”
They know how stupid I am, yet still choose to be seen with me in public.
So next May is not good-bye. Not even going to separate states for grad school can sever the bonds between us. It really is true what people say: college friends become your lifelong friends; high school friends become lifelong friends if you’re lucky.
I didn’t come to college to find my husband. I came to find my bridesmaids.