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Girls Just want to Have Fun

October 06, 2008

One of the hardest things about leaving for college last year was saying goodbye to those I left behind. My slightly populous city in the heart of Central Florida contained the people that I cared most about: my parents, siblings, grandparents and friends that I had grown up with over the years. They all stayed back as I packed up my belongings, slowly shuffled to the car, and made my way to my fall orientation.

Thinking more about how nervous I was to meet my future roommate and whether our bed-sheets and wall decorations would be color-coordinated, I really didn’t dwell too much on the fact that over the next four years, I would have to develop a completely new circle of friends and support group.

Lucky for me, Rollins had this handy system of Rollins College Conference Courses (RCCs) set up. Essentially, each incoming freshmen class is divided into these RCCs, which are general education classes focusing on one specific topic. My RCC was called “The Nature of Happiness,” a philosophy course taught by the incredibly jubilant Hoyt Edge. In this course, we read the works of Aristotle and Epictetus and debated the different forms of happiness and the affect that they have on society. It was an exciting and enthralling class, like none I had ever had before. However, it was more than just the topic of the course that made me love getting up at 8:30 in the morning to attend class. It was the faces that I saw and the voices that I heard every time I was in that room.

Photo: This is my "Happiness" RCC right before our fall orientation karaoke competition.

My RCC soon became my hub for friendships. At first too shy to have a real conversation with any of my classmates, I stuck to small-talk and fidgeting awkwardly in my seat until class started. However, it wasn’t long before the awkwardness of new friendships began to dissolve (mostly due to the high number of Fox Fridays and community service activities that my RCC had planned out.) Before I knew it, I had a found myself a solid group of friends who I loved to hang out without outside of class.

In particular, I found myself growing closer to three of my classmates. Ironically, we had always sat next to or across from each other during our RCC without even knowing what the future would hold for us. Two roommates, Katie and Libby, sat across from me while tennis-playing Alli sat next to me. After a few weeks of knowing each other, we all decided that we needed a break from campus food and decided to head down Park Avenue for dinner. It was our first outing together, and the first time that I met Alli’s roommate, Alli. (Yes, they both have the same name. They also both have really blond hair and are two weeks a part from sharing the same birthday. Needless to say, we had to resort to nicknames for these two.)

Anyhow, that first dinner out marked the beginning of something beautiful. It was like falling in love (except better because we didn’t have to keep fixing our hair or wear excruciatingly painful 4” heels.) From then on, we were seemingly inseparable. Everyday there was a lunch date among the four of us, and a Monday night episode of The Hills afforded us the perfect excuse to put down our homework and convene for an hour of chocolate-eating and personal venting. It became our ritual. During commercials, we would mute the television, pass around food, and dish about the latest happenings in our personal lives. It was the perfect way to start off the week and to end the night. One might say that the fighting among Lauren, Heidi, and Spencer was simply the background music to our friendship.

From R-Journal

Photo: Here I am with Katie, Alli C.,Libby, Alli T., and our friend Amy before my birthday dinner last January.

At a school of only 2,000 undergraduates, it can still be hard to find your place at first. Luckily, I found my solace in these girls, who by the grace of God and a little magic by Explorations Director Doug Little, I met through my RCC.

Stemming from a homeroom-like class that discussed philosophy for three hours a week, I found true friends that will most likely last me a lifetime. A year later, we still hold true to our Hills tradition. In fact, it seems that now, more than ever, we need it. Sometimes, the adults in our lives neglect to tell us how hard growing up really can be. Moving away to college and leaving your former life behind takes a whole lot of bravery. Hard times come and go. Tense phone calls with relatives occur, breakups with boyfriends bring tears to a flushed face, and the pressure of classes can all but make one want to drop out of school and become a character at a Disney World theme park.

However, it certainly does help to have a strong support group that promises to be there every step of the way. For example, nothing cures a bad day better than being able to barge into your friend’s room, sit on her floor, and vent about your day while she sympathetically feeds you the “emergency chocolate.”

The truth is that college life is so much more than the papers we write and the clubs we join. It is about more than just building our resumes. It is about discovering the person that we have hidden deep inside of us and finding our passions in this vast world as well as forming relationships with those who will help us to achieve these things.

Although I have found my core groups of friends here at Rollins, I also realize that I have hundreds of more relationships to form in this community over the next few years. There are so many people here that I could learn and draw from, so many more relationships that can be formed. Thankfully, this part of the Rollins College experience doesn’t end after my first year or first semester. It is continual until the day I graduate and maybe even beyond that.

From R-Journal

Photo: Our lovely entourage took a road trip down to Libby's house for a delicious home-cooked meal and some much-needed downtime this past September.

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From R-Journal

More about Brittany... Growing up in Central Florida, Brittany had always imagined attending a college where the snow flowed heavily. However, all thoughts of donning her heavy winter coat dissipated when she laid eyes on Rollins. A picturesque private school only a few hours from her hometown, Rollins swept her off her feet. Now a sophomore, Brittany devotes the majority of her time to The Sandspur, where she works as the Life & Times editor, and to R-TV, where she serves as the director of public relations. Brittany said, “Over the past year, Rollins has become a second home to me. It has provided me with an atmosphere in which I can live and thrive.”

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