Say It Louder

My first year at the University of Virginia was absolute shit. And that’s not an exaggeration. For every second of every day, I literally wished I was anywhere else but here.

Truthfully speaking, I could have had only myself to blame. I can be more on the introverted side, so maybe I just wasn’t putting myself out there enough. Or - maybe it was the University’s fault for not making out-of-

When I was in elementary school, I would anxiously wait for the letter that would decide my fate for the next 9 months: which teacher I would have. Throughout anything that could happen in a year, my teachers remained a constant and defining presence. In third grade, I had a brand new teacher, fresh out of college, who wore Abercrombie chinos and carried the same pattern of Vera Bradley lunchbox as me. I obsessed--I wanted to be just like

I played basketball throughout high school and middle school, and before that I played on travel teams and in intramural leagues, and before that I played in my cul de sac with my two older brothers and dad. Basketball was a big part of my identity, something that shaped me and helped me grow.

Unfortunately, the sad fact in my life is that boy’s basketball is

At 3:30 in the morning, my head resting on the toilet, I decided to give the whole vegetarianism thing a try. Food poisoning is a bitch that tends to change how you see things--in this case, my juicy cheeseburger from the night before looked much less tantalizing on the way out than on the way in.

Finals were looming and I was soon going to be home, with the comfort of an oven and