Coping With Maturity

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Last year, I watched the second years stride confidently to breakfast, thumping each other on the shoulder and complaining loudly about mushroom stroganoff again, and I wished I was so resoundingly mature and sophisticated and well-adjusted. As I manically attempted to form everlasting friendships in my first few days - using everything from being an American to forgetting bath towels as bases for what I hoped were meaningful and memorable first conversations - I wondered what exactly they injected into the infamous mushroom stroganoff which, over the course of a year, seemed to mould the quivering and spineless (me) into the self-assured and independent (them). However (although I do feel I've grown exponentially over the past year) I'm still not them. I was sort of hoping that greeting the first years at the airport would shock me into the correct second-year frame of mind, a shock I really could have used since I had to be awake at 3:45 in the morning to leave for Heathrow. I use the term 'be awake' rather inaccurately, perhaps it's more appropriate to use 'STAY awake'...my initial plan - the one which actually made sense - was to go to sleep at about 8 and be well-rested and rosy-cheeked by the time I arrived at the airport, casually- but well-dressed, the very picture of pseudonourished Atlantic College health. The Tite N' Brite party at sosh should not even have been a temptation. However, when you've got a famously (infamously?) ostentatiously colourful closet like mine it becomes a necessity, not to mention another instance to prove that the candy-purple pageboy wig cannot be brought out often enough. My plan was quickly and stupidly adjusted: instead of sleeping until 3:45, I was going to simply stay up all night until 3:45, and then use the convenient 5-hour drive to get some sleep. Unfortunately I didn't take into account the fact that social opportunities all tend to sort of dry up by about 2 on a Tuesday morning, and though I attempted admirably to keep myself up with Lydia's Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 5, the horrendously early-nineties fashion and special effects had a soporific effect. This is why I was woken up by Isha from across the hall screaming "IT'S FOUR O'CLOCK EMMA YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WAKE ME UUUUUPPP!" If that didn't wake all of my roommates up, then the obscenity I promptly screamed in response definitely did, as I rolled into the first pair of trousers I found lying on the floor (turquoise skinny jeans, as I discovered later. In the LIGHT), jammed a hat over my wig-crimped greasy hair and stuffed an emergency tube of mascara into a purse. Three large lattes with extra espresso shots later and I still looked like a ginger zombie, holding up my ghetto corrugated cardboard Atlantic College sign forlornly in the Terminal 5 International Arrivals. There are many, many first-year cameras containing incriminating photos from the three hours I fell asleep with my mouth wide open on the bus on the way back. Nearly as incriminating as the CAVRA induction video, which has forced me to learn to place no trust whatsoever in videographers for the rest of my life. "Oh, we're just testing the camera", Haider said, "give us a hot CAVRA girl pose, it won't actually go in the video, we're just running a sound check", he said. Based on the past week, it would now actually be easier to introduce myself not as Emma from the United States, but as Dude, You're That Girl From The CAVRA Video, Hahaha Awesome. I've been helping with service induction for the past two days, and being the token girl in my group I got to do nothing but hoist first years up the climbing wall for 8 hours straight; it actually hurts to pick up a coffee cup normally now because my palms are so callused and rope-burned. At least that means I can convince people that CAVRA really is an intense physical service, and show off my rough belayer hands with a flourish on the six-hour hikes I have to lead at camp. I'm leaving this afternoon, on a bus with the first years in my bright blue AC Camp 2008 t-shirt with the tent and the sun on it. I'll shamelessly admit that I adored camp last year, that it was the one thing which convinced me I'd enjoy CAVRA, and that it will be infinitely better this year with the addition of an official t-shirt and showers. I might as well add that watching the first years make friends and couple up is a lot more entertaining than Olympic table tennis, which is saying a lot, and besides it's my right as both a second year and as gossip columnist to both observe and scope. Wait, I'm sorry, I believe it IS blatantly obvious that I'm typing 'second year' just to make myself feel slightly more like one. It's very surreal to burst into a dayroom and realise that suddenly you don't know anyone in it, and arrive for lunch at 12:05 instead of 11:55 on a Friday afternoon to find that there are actual queues for fish and chips again. I don't feel at all qualified to tell anyone that CAVRA is the service for them or that taking Standard Physics will crush their soul, because in my mind I'm simply not that responsible yet. I only wish that I could see myself now from the eyes of whoever I was a year ago, and either giggle awkwardly at the inexplicable old bicycle wheel Rosh and I hung from my ceiling (which serves as a rotating holder for all my scarves) or possibly marvel at my own newfound confidence.

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