Living in the District

My dorm at the George Washington University was one very messy room with a bed in each corner. Yes, I slept in a room with four people. By April, I wasn’t speaking to one of them. I’ll get into that.

I am not a clean person by any means. I tell myself I’m going to be, but I never stay that way for long. The dorm itself was already pretty low quality. I developed this habit of peeling the walls because there were so many layers of paint under it.

The night of move-in at GW, instead of getting dinner with my new roommates, my mom set up a dinner with people at a pretentious membership-only club. They were planning to do an event with me later. My mom pushed me to go to each event because she told me it would give me good connections. I didn’t really care. I already had connections, Once I was there, I felt awkward. I just wanted to leave.

Hopefully no one I met knows how to use the internet to read this. The club was for rich old people, and I was essentially their entertainment. ` `

After that dinner, I Ubered to meet my new friends at the Lincoln Memorial. My roommates made friends with people who were going to GW through a group chat, and so by default, I became friends with them too.

There are a lot of things I think would be better if I had treated my experience at GW differently. The first thing is the people I chose as my friends. Because I was already invited into this group, it was too easy. I didn’t bother to open myself up to meet new friends, too.

I was a journalism major, but most of the people in my friend group were political science or international affairs majors. After my past experience in high school, the last thing I wanted to do was talk more about politics. Granted, I did live in D.C., which is obviously the center of U.S. politics.

However, I don’t regret going to D.C. at all. In fact, I miss it a lot. I met my best friend Chloe there (hey queen). Chloe and I were always on the same wavelength. We both felt similarly about the annoying political talk and bonded over our nerves about the college experience.The first night I remember bonding was when she forgot her ID for the club, and I didn’t really care about going anyway. We went back to the dorm and had more fun than we would have if we had gone out.

I feel like we stuck together after that. I laughed with her when a weird guy hit on her while she wearing a Michael Myers mask at a frat party, and she was there when I threw up all over a hookah bar in Virginia.

Chloe and I had the greatest adventures. We would walk to random places and see the strangest things. Once, while we were studying on the National Mall, two toddlers started throwing rocks at us and calling us “putas” until we left.

Chloe introduced me to my favorite show of all time: Broad City. I fully believe that Chloe is the Abbi to my Ilana. Our adventures always reminded me of different episodes on our own version of Broad City.

I think what makes us such good friends is how much we understand each other. I feel like our brains work in similar ways. It’s nice to just have someone who completely gets you.

We were still different in a lot of ways, though.. Chloe is not completely like me — she’s the opposite. She tried to help me organize, and I slightly improved, but I was by no means clean.

This is why we decided that it would make sense that we wouldn’t directly live with each other for our sophomore year. Instead, I decided to live with one of my freshman year roommates, Margaret. Chloe would be living directly with our other friend, Theresa. In January, we decided that the four of us would share an apartment the following year.

I’ve mentioned a bunch how messy I was, but I wasn’t the messiest in the room. No, that was Margaret. By the end of the year, her drawer was just on the floor with clothes spilling out. One time, Chloe lost her phone and she found it ringing under Margaret’s dirty underwear. Also, in the morning, Maragret’s alarm would probably go off every 5 minutes for 20 minutes or until someone groaned her name. She feigned that it was impossible for her to wake up to just one alarm. Regardless, I still wanted to live with her for some reason.

January was also sorority recruitment. For those who haven’t experienced sorority rush, it might be one of the worst institutions in college.For days, girls get in full makeup and their best outfits dedicate hours to the process only to be rejected and made to feel like they are not enough.

Each day, girls would go to a certain number of “parties.” Upon entering these parties, there would be sorority girls clapping and singing with dead eyes about their sisterhood while they take you into a corner and you awkwardly stand next to them until they finish singing. After that, a sister will engage you in some surface level, dull small talk. This process is repeated for hours each day.

This kind of thing isn’t usually up my alley, and I never planned on joining a sorority. However, I was pretty unsatisfied with my social life. I suspected that my friends other than Chloe wouldn’t last longer than freshman year (though I thought it would happen more naturally than it did).

I didn’t do the best during rush, probably because small talk isn’t necessarily my strong suit I didn’t let it get to me too much. I still ended up joining a sorority to give it a shot, but I didn’t feel a connection with many people in my pledge class, except for Theresa, the girl Chloe was going to live with. I was excited to get closer to her through the process. My big, Olivia, was really cool and we were both pretty uninvolved in the sorority. We got along well.

I started an internship on the Hill in February. It is pretty rare for freshman to have congressional internships, and their reputation is generally obnoxious, honestly. But, a congressman’s office offered me an internship after I spoke through Skype at a town hall in his district. I felt like I couldn’t pass it up, so I took the opportunity. I didn’t do much in the office, and I only worked two days a week. It was pretty cool to work in the Capitol, but I felt weird being seen an overly-ambitious freshman or worse, a school shooting victim who was handed an internship.

I figured out a way to miss a bunch of my classes. Specifically, my class on American Government took attendance by quiz. The professor would display a password for the first five minutes of class, so I would get the password and leave. My mistake though, was guessing the answers rather than looking them up. I did not realize how much these 5 question tests would impact my grade.

I don’t know where my mind was at the time. I don’t know what I was doing or how it happened, but my grades began to slip. My life was completely different from the year before, and I just lost my ground.

My days consisted of class, my internship and hanging out with Chloe. I napped and watched TV somewhere in between. A lot of it is a blur now, but there are stories I remember clearly.

One night, our friend group went out to dinner for two of our friends birthdays, Bran and Elon. After we got back, we were hanging out in Bran’s dorm and I hear someone say, “Margaret’s nose is so big, she could get the minority vote for being Jewish!” Another person chimed in and said “Margaret could go on birthright!” I sat there stunned. I was the only Jew in the room, besides Chloe who is half-Jewish and didn’t hear the comments.

Four months earlier, a synagogue was gunned down and now I sat in that room with another reminder of anti-semitism in 2019. I was pissed. This group of people prided themselves in being politically correct, all sat there and continued laughing after jokes about my religion were made. I had to say something. I couldn’t just let people talk like that.

I got up to leave and everyone asked me where I was going. I said to them: “Are you kidding me? You guys are sitting here making anti-semitic jokes and expect me to stay. I don’t want to be here.”

I had seen antisemitic drawings on papers left on desks at school, but I never witnessed people making jokes like that and being the only Jew in the room. GW is known to be a very Jewish school, but my hometown of Parkland is even more Jewish. I couldn’t believe the audacity of those people to make those jokes. They were people who I called my friends.

I waited for an apology. I showed I was mad and hurt, but my roommates were the only ones who said anything about the offensive comments. My “friends” didn’t apologize until I texted them to explain how their comments made me feel. Bran’s excuse was that “in boy scouts, we made jokes about this jewish kid’s nose and he didn’t seem to care.” Though he could be annoying sometimes, I really liked Bran. After receiving his bad excuse, I told him it was going to be hard for me to warm up to him again.

Things with that friend group were a little bit rocky. I passive aggressively resented them for turning a blind eye to the comments that were made. Also, that month, 2 people from my high school committed suicide. I had more random acquaintances check up on me during that time than my own friends.

Housing applications were also opening in April. Theresa, Margaret, Chloe and I were still planning to live together. Theresa and I became closer since we were in the same sorority. The night before housing applications opened, Theresa texted me to come to her room because she was anxious.

We were never at the point where we cried to each other, so I felt like her opening up drew us closer. She told me about her anxieties about our future dorm. I told her that we would address whatever issues arose in a mature way while living together, and assured her that we would be able to manage.

The next morning, Margaret told me she talked to Theresa and they were both fully intending to live with us. I told Chloe about Theresa’s nerves and she started getting nervous that Theresa didn’t want to live with her. I told her that there was nothing to worry about.

Later that day, Theresa texted Chloe and I to come down to her room. We were worried at first, but then we realized she probably just wanted us to rank our top housing choices.

When we got to the room, Theresa and Margaret were there and I could tell something was off. As soon as Theresa started speaking, I knew what she was going to say. She backed out. She told us “for the sake of my mental health, I cannot live with you guys.” I didn’t understand that, but for some reason, my immediate response was to forgive. It wasn’t until Margaret started speaking that I got angry.

“The dynamic between you and Chloe makes it seem like nobody else is there. I decided I am going with Theresa.” Margaret told us. The housing applications were due in two days. At the last moment, these two people left us with no one to live with and no options. We had been planning to live together since January. I was so hurt and confused. What did I do to deserve that? Chloe and I were hanging out were Margaret a few days before and it seemed like we were having a great time. I didn’t — and still don’t — understand.

It’s a strong word, but I was betrayed. That’s how it felt. They gaslit us and made us believe we were going to live together, even though they knew otherwise. I was so glad I had Chloe during that time. At least I wasn’t screwed over by myself.

That night, Margaret didn’t sleep in our room. For the next few days, she stayed out of our room in order to avoid me. She didn’t want to face what she had done. Chloe and I weren’t too thrilled with the group, so we left their groupchat. To the rest of them, I guess that was a sign that we never wanted to talk to any of them again. None of them reached out to either of us, except Katrina, Theresa’s current roommate. I can’t really remember what she said, but it was awful, and it led to me blocking her number. I was done with those people. They were dramatic and inconsiderate — just straight-up assholes. Oh, and Katrina, Theresa and Margaret ended up living together…interesting.

School was different after that. Even though I didn’t like them, it was hard to lose an entire friend group. I felt like I didn’t belong. I had Chloe and her roommates and some neighbors. I spent even more time in Chloe’s room after that because Margaret’s presence made me angry. I never liked the sound of her voice, but it was on a whole new level after she screwed me over like that. She had a really nasally speaking voice and would just talk about stupid comparative politics or something. She just sucked so much.

Sometimes I would get random invites to events since I was an MSD student who lived in D.C.. I got a call from a lady from the Women’s Democratic Committee and she invited me to an awards ceremony for Maxine Waters as Democratic Woman of the Year. I was invited because Parkland students were winning the Trailblazer Award. I decided to go and take Chloe because I thought it would be cool and we would get free food.

The ceremony was at a weird house in DuPont Circle. When I got there, Chloe and I awkwardly walked around grabbing cheese cubes. Soon, they started gathering everybody to the ceremony room. Surprisingly, I was sat at a table right next to Congressman John Lewis. I met him once before because we spoke back to back at the March For Our Lives in Atlanta, but I didn’t want to bother him.

The ceremony was pretty entertaining because if you haven’t heard Maxine Waters speak, she’s kind of crazy and it’s amazing. It was an interesting experience…until I got angry. When they sent up the Parkland trailblazer awards, the March for Our Lives organization sent three people who worked for them that were not MSD students to accept the award.

I was boiling over with anger. It was hard to contain myself in a room full of respectful rich people. Congresswoman Lucy McBath made a speech presenting the award talking about the pain these people experienced and what they went through. But the people who got up on stage didn’t go through anything and they happily accepted the award as if they had. I was one of two people from Parkland there. The other person graduated the year before the shooting. It frustrated me that people saw March for Our Lives as synonymous with Parkland students because they are not the same thing.

By the end of the semester, being able to continue at GW all depended on my final grades. My parents wouldn’t accept more than one C. When I left GW for the summer, I was still waiting on my grades. I didn’t realize I was saying goodbye to my friends for good. When I got my exam results, it became clear that my grades weren’t worth the money my parents were investing in my education.

They insisted I leave GW and come home because they thought my grades must be correlated with mental health issues. I’m sure they were. I left home for college without being emotionally prepared, and it affected my academics. My life took a turn in a way I didn’t expect. I came back home and I’m currently a commuter student at FAU. My time at GW shaped a lot of who I am even though I was only there for a short time. I will never regret going there because I found Chloe, my friend soulmate.