Our Fresh Frosh columnists will be spending the year documenting their transition from high school to Northwestern life. Check out all four of our writers — and read their stories.
A mere 29 hours after arriving in Evanston, I found myself on a freezing bus, sitting on the lap of a stranger, heading to an unknown destination. I draped my legs across him as his head smooshed mine against his protruding post-surgery shoulder. With this stranger, I found myself a part of contortions and cuddling positions that I’d only experienced with former boyfriends, each of whom I’d dated for at least 10 months — I had hardly known the stranger for more than 10 minutes. At times, we even had our necks intertwined like two flamingos partaking in a tango. This, however, was all a matter of survival, because the bus was fucking freezing.
And so was the all-night bus ride that took me and my fellow PWild campers to Superior Hiking Trail. Our attempts to survive were not unique. In fact, it took observing the pair of strangers behind us, leaning on one another for warmth and comfort, to inspire our quest for coziness.
All the campers had come to the conclusion that Don, the angry bus driver, truly wanted us dead; not once did he relieve us from the icy blast of air circulation. Some campers even took to sleeping on the floor of the bus. It was grimy, but it was heated by the engine below.
Don did afford us two stops during the 10-hour trip. However, he did not let us grab money from our backpacks locked beneath the bus. A fellow camper and I managed to scrounge up three dollars from another reluctant camper to purchase a snack that might warm us up, physically and emotionally. I chose hot chocolate, which, at the time, was the best purchase of what seemed to be my shortening life. This hot chocolate, along with the sound of another camper angrily reproaching Curious George for its many digressions from reality, ensured that I would not sleep that night.
Looking back, I often ask myself if my interactions with the stranger made the bus ride creepy or comfortable. Really, they did neither. The interactions and the bus ride made me question what a stranger really is. The 30 strangers I met on the bus are now familiar faces around campus, and the 11 strangers on my trip became 11 of my closest friends. The stranger I awkwardly cuddled with is now my best friend at Northwestern. Everyone became so close, so fast because of shared experience.
At Northwestern, we will discover friendships in what appears to be a sea of strangers. The reverend at NU Mosaic, an Essential NU, asked us to appreciate the differences within our class and student body. I ask you to acknowledge our similarity. Though you may not know the name and face of that guy down the hall from you or that girl in your astronomy class, you share an experience with both of them. You are all Northwestern students. We are all Northwestern students. In sharing this experience, we grow a little bit closer, all without having to spend a night on a freezing bus. College isn’t so strange after all.