Why I hate Springfield, MO: A treatise, Part the First.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I had the bright idea to go away for college.  I had just finished my first year at the local community college and I decided I needed the full college experience.  I had my eyes set on Drury University.  I even tried out for a choir scholarship (sadly, my repertoire consisted only of Disney songs, thanks to my hippie-esque voice teacher)...I did not get it...my neighbor did.  True story.  That did not deter me, however, and I soon got enrolled at SMSU in Springfield.

It was going to be AWESOME!  My grandma took me shopping for dorm decorating supplies and I bought the brightest, LOUDEST comforter set EVAR!

I did not have the best taste at 18.  Also, I swear my hair just gets bigger in these pictures...

 My friend Ashley bought me a hamper filled with snacks and cleaning supplies.  My parents started making plans to convert my bedroom into a bomb shelter.  And BEST OF ALL, because of the incoming student overflow, instead of a traditional dorm, I was going to be staying in the international student apartments, deceivingly named Sunvilla Tower.

I knew things were not going to go as well as I suspected when we pulled up to unload my things and instead of being greeted by a gleaming tower, the building was more reminiscent of the apartment complex down the street from us when I was growing up in the projects.  It was a serious letdown.  But bigger blows were to come.

 Firstly, the apartment was only made for two people...and there were three of us.  I had a very sweet roommate from China and a roommate from Brazil that I never really saw except for when she and her boyfriend were making out in her bed while we were trying to sleep.  Yeah, that's right, all three of us had to share a bedroom.  Not only that, but my clothes had to go in the living room closet b/c there wasn't enough room in the bedroom. And since I got there late, I did not get a drawer in the dresser we all had to share.  Which was, unsurprisingly, in the living room.

I'm seriously considering a career in drafting...

My roommate from Brazil was really intense and there to study dance.  She had an American boyfriend who was pseudo-buddhist and would come over and declare everyone in the apartment had to use absolute silence so he could meditate.  Why he had to meditate in our apartment, I'll never know.  They seemed to only ever be in the apartment when he wanted to meditate, or at night (as previously mentioned) while I was trying to sleep. They were there so scarcely that to this day, I'm not sure what her name was.

You can't help it when you're a loud typer!

My roommate from China was very very sweet.  Her name was Yei Lei, but she went by her "American" name of Aviva.  Unfortunately, we had some culture clashes.

Word to the wise:  Dawn is not dishwasher safe...

Everything in that god-forsaken apartment was bubble gum pink.  Thanks for that, 1970s.

Honestly, it was the smell.

I was also very very poor while going to school here.  I had two work study jobs, which paid approximately nothing.   At one of my jobs, I was required to go through about 50 years of collected research and throw away things "that didn't look important"...(to a sophomore undergrad, everything looks important.)  It was the single most terrifying job I have ever had.  I'm pretty sure I somehow derailed a professor's stem cell research.

And yet, I could have endured all of this if it hadn't been for my trip home for Thanksgiving.  I came back and the trash had not been taken out.  There were little baby maggots happily munching away on left over boiled cabbage in the sink.  And some sort of green goop leaking across the kitchen floor from a pile of trash bags.  I sat down on the floor and cried.  Then I called my mom and cried some more.  Then I went to the store and bought a truck load of cleaning supplies and a hazmat suit.

I almost suffocated from trying to fit my hair in that suit...

Approximately three weeks later, after the semester finals were through (which I mostly failed), I moved home.


 But leaky garbage and terrible roommates were not the only horror stories I have from Springfield.  Stay tuned for Part Deux or How I Ended up in Class With One Shoe.