The Move-in Process

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Hello friends, followers, casual blog enthusiast etc.,

My name is Daniel and I am a first year student at the University of Toledo. I have been inspired by events, as well as people to write this blog you are reading today. This is a blog site, so if grammar errors offend you, this may not be the place for you. This is not my professional writing class, and I will not treat it like it is because this is the place I am going to tell my story, and like any other great story teller, I am going to do it my own way. First of all, you may not agree with everything said in this blog, and that's ok. This is a blog written in the perspective of a 19 year old, upper middle class, biracial college freshman. We're not always going to see eye to eye, but that's the beauty of writing, you don't have to.

Let's start with the title of this bad boy, "The move-in process". No, this is not going to be a detailed story of the day I moved into college. This title more refers to the fact that this blog is going to be a long bumpy ride, and you better be prepared to move-in to my mind and get comfortable. I realize that that last statement was pretty corny, and I am going to continue to stand by it. Get used to it people, you are choosing to be here.

When I was going through my college selection process, many things ran through my mind. How close do I want to be to home? How many people from my high school am I going to have to see on a regular basis? Whats the weather like? (Like I really gave two craps about weather) Can I see myself excelling here? All that nonsense you tell yourself when you really think its your decision. If I had it my way, I would probably be at the University of Cincinnati sitting in my dorm room preparing for finals. But I'm not, and while that fact may haunt me of what could have been, I am ever grateful that I "chose" UT.

I did not have the greatest relationship with my friends back home after my last summer as a high school student, and wanted nothing to do with them after I left for college. Some of you may just pin this to teenage angst, and might be a little right, but that is a story for another day. With that being said, I was very open to the possibility of new friends. This proved to be very confusing.

I was apart of a...assimilation...type program for incoming business students. I can call it that because when I first signed up, I thought it was going to be a program for advanced students, getting ahead in the college of business world by meeting professors, going to local businesses, and basically seeing what the college was like before we got in. I'm not a nerd I swear! This proved however to be very wrong. The process of meeting people in this interesting program was that of a Lion chasing down zebras in the Serengeti. When I say that, the picture in most of your heads was probably a bunch of the really cool kids, clinging to anything and anyone to reassure them of their high school glory days. No? That's only me... well fine, I guess. In actuality, it was more of the few normal people enrolled in the program, desperately seeking out anyone who could carry on a conversation more than just about "that time I went to the auto show"...cool story bro. Not to say cars aren't cool, I just don't want to be shown a picture of one for an hour straight.

Eventually I made it through the dust cloud. I had found four people who I thought my crazy messed up background fit in with. I will not disclose their names because I decided to make this blog on the fly and really don't know if they'd be super ok with me talking about them, but I digress. The first one was an old high school "friend". By "friend", I mean she just cheated off of me in every class together and I happened to get pretty good grades in both. Go figure. The second was a girl she had met before I got there from Cincy, she will come up later on. The third, a guy from west Cleveland, who I thought was going to be my best friend for four years, at the time. The last, a kid from the burbs of Chicago, a city not very different from my own. This was a good and bad thing. Eventually he told us he was going to be too cool to hang out with us once classes started up and he rushed his fraternity. Pi Kapp. Booo. Never the less, these were the people I was going to be spending my next week and a half of "pre-college" with. They weren't the best, but they were loyal.

Confused yet? Good, you shouldn't be, this is where it gets interesting. On the last day of this bitter-sweet program, I happened to stumble upon another camper at subway. I really couldn't tell you why I was in the student union because I really don't know. I wasn't hungry, and I didn't have my money with me to get anything even if I wanted it. The kid I saw, I had literally never spoken a word to during the entire program. I wasn't even going to say a word to him, but he recognized me and the nice person that I am said hi and we ate dinner together. This sparked my newest friendship that would lead to me meeting my best friend and long lost brother. No, he is not my actual brother.

We were bored and most of the other students were starting to move into the dorms, which meant open parties. I was not always this wild party animal that many know me as today. I really didn't like big groups of people of whom I didn't know or have a ton in common with, but I chose to go out for the sake of my new group of friends. This is where I met my best friend Chalrie. The kid I had been eating dinner with that night lived on the second floor of my dorm hall, which meant all of his roommates moved in days before mine (5th floor). His roommate was Charlie, his childhood friend who also chose to go to UT and being childhood friends with Brandon, chose to room with him. The funny thing is, when I was looking for roommates through the online service, I had requested to room with them because they were my top matches. The system asks you a series of questions and matches you up with people most like you. It gives you a percentage and me and Chalrie got a 95% match, and me and Brandon 86%. I would later learn that they didn't want to accept any request and I would later get paired with the worst roommates in all of recorded history. 

On the way to this open party, I was thrown into being introduced to this random person (Charlie) and neither of us wanted to go to this party. We started to walk a little slower and let the rest of them go to the party. We eventually met back up with Brandon and went back to their room. This was welcome weekend and little did I know, the semester to follow would be a very interesting one. 

This was "The move-in Process".