Go Go Gadget Exposition:

Before we continue the story:
1. Ankle update: a) work is incredibly hard on crutches b) the stationary bike, despite being a non-weightbearing exercise, hurts me like a motherfucker.

2. I apologize in advance for the length of Part 2 of this story. It's the longest leg of my journey through ED. Bear with me.

Go go Gadget Exposition:

Sophomore year at Columbia was rough. I was fortunate enough to have the BEST ROOMMATE in the world, the amazing company of Shannon & Mark, who kept me (in)sane through Creative Writing, and a lead role in one of my favorite plays in the universe, Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing.

Greatest roommate in the entire universe. I am so lucky that I got to spend even a semester sharing a space--and a nest--with Ana. 

Once The Real Thing ended, however, and the semester wound down, I found myself sinking even deeper into a food-fueled depression. I was in a situation codenamed SOL (shit out of luck):

In high school, I had taken about 8 grillion college credits through the AP program & passed all of the tests with flying colors (with the exception of statistics, which was a hilarious waste of my high school's resources & credit hours). I had also taken the maximum number of credits at Columbia every semester (21), and even petitioned to take more one semester.

Because I had gained so many credits, transferring to a Florida school to take advantage of my Bright Futures scholarship was impossible: I had not only already earned my Associate's degree--with the exception of one math & one science class--, I had already completed nearly all of the requirements for an English major. Not only wouldn't the schools accept me as a senior, but I was also hindered by the fact that I hadn't technically completed my AA.

The University of Central Florida accepted me after hearing my sob story, but when I went down over Thanksgiving/my birthday of 2006, I was so depressed by the campus & the school that I considered dropping out of college altogether instead of transferring.

Somehow, however, the English department of the University of Florida decided to make an exception. The accepted me as a senior on the condition that I finish my AA in the next year. I took them up on it &, come January, I packed up my grandmother's car & moved to Gainesville, Florida.

I should have known that things were going to go awry when my tire exploded on the Turnpike on my way up to school. Murphy & his damn law have never been particularly nice to me...



To put it nicely, I was miserable in Gainesville. I was leaving the center of the apathetic intelligentsia & entering the center of all things sports & athletics related. Here, we celebrated football victories (like the National Championship, which we won on my first day of school); at Columbia we asked, "We have a football team?!"  At UF sorority girls in itty bitty tank tops ran around campus all day; at Columbia, we layered in scarves & sweaters so we could get milkshakes from Tom's or giant slices of pizza from Koronet's at 4 am.

Believe it or not, non-Columbia Seinfeld fans, Tom's Restaurant was just around the corner from my dorm. (& later, in grad school, on the same street as my apartment!)

I was fortunate enough to have one of my closest high school friends find me an apartment in the same complex in which she lived (3 miles from the school, around the corner from I-75, and right across the street from the "Beef Teaching Unit," which was just a glorified way of saying "cow pasture"). Nevertheless, I started the new year & the new semester with nothing but trepidation & sadness.

More soon...