Yo, who the F is this?
My name is Abby, and I am a polka-dot crazed, vintage loving, previously homeschooled, college student and theatre nerd. And I'm about to try this adulting thing.
To be completely fair, I've done adulty things before. After all, I am 23 and I moved out of my parents' home for the first time when I was 17. But that was different. I started by living with some family friends, got two nanny jobs with families I already knew and slept at their houses with them providing my meals, worked for two years until they no longer needed me and then I had to move back in with my parents. (Who, sadly, lost the sewing/craft room when I moved back in and reclaimed my old bedroom.) After that, I decided to try college, and I have been living on campus ever since. But I'm about to start my senior year and things are going to be different.
For my senior year, I am moving into a campus apartment with three of my friends, who, for the purpose of this blog, we will call Hotlips, Indiana-Jane, and Flowerchild. I'm used to having roommates. I've been living with Flowerchild since my sophomore year, and before that I had a lovely roommate from Austria. But, somehow, sharing an apartment feels different. When you share a single room it's about you keep your half clean and I'll keep my half clean. Discussions include "is this your notebook or mine?" "can I have someone over?" "are we supposed to tell someone that our door doesn't lock?" But now we have four bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Now it's questions like, "who's making dinner tonight?" "whose turn is it to buy toilet paper?" "but you picked the tv show last night, why do you get to pick again?" We're buying things like dishes, and brooms, and shower curtains. We're discussing things like exactly how long dishes can sit in the sink before it's annoying, and how to mark food that is not for sharing.
Not only do I have to navigate apartment life this year, but I'm beginning an even adultier task: Grad School Applications.
I am currently studying theatre performance and history, and I plan to go on to grad school to study theatre history. I know what you're thinking, "Theatre history? What is that? What do you even do with that?" Well, we'll get to that later. The important thing is that, because of this being a little-known area of study, it's not like every school has a graduate program for it. In fact, most don't. So, I have seven options and I'm just going to apply to all of them and see what happens. But seven applications is a lot of writing, a lot of work, and, oh yes, none of the schools I'm applying to are anywhere near any of my family. In fact, of the seven states that house these seven schools, I have visited two. Plus, all of the schools are in cities, and I have always lived in a small town. Which means, whatever happens, it's all new territory for me. And when I get there I have to do things like handle utility bills, get to a grocery story by myself, and sleep in an apartment with no one else in it, which I think will be the weirdest, as I've never truly had that much space to myself.
Basically, for the next few years, even eating breakfast will be an adventure for me, and I'll daily have to pretend that I know what I'm doing. The good news? I'm a theatre major. We literally study pretending.
To be completely fair, I've done adulty things before. After all, I am 23 and I moved out of my parents' home for the first time when I was 17. But that was different. I started by living with some family friends, got two nanny jobs with families I already knew and slept at their houses with them providing my meals, worked for two years until they no longer needed me and then I had to move back in with my parents. (Who, sadly, lost the sewing/craft room when I moved back in and reclaimed my old bedroom.) After that, I decided to try college, and I have been living on campus ever since. But I'm about to start my senior year and things are going to be different.
For my senior year, I am moving into a campus apartment with three of my friends, who, for the purpose of this blog, we will call Hotlips, Indiana-Jane, and Flowerchild. I'm used to having roommates. I've been living with Flowerchild since my sophomore year, and before that I had a lovely roommate from Austria. But, somehow, sharing an apartment feels different. When you share a single room it's about you keep your half clean and I'll keep my half clean. Discussions include "is this your notebook or mine?" "can I have someone over?" "are we supposed to tell someone that our door doesn't lock?" But now we have four bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Now it's questions like, "who's making dinner tonight?" "whose turn is it to buy toilet paper?" "but you picked the tv show last night, why do you get to pick again?" We're buying things like dishes, and brooms, and shower curtains. We're discussing things like exactly how long dishes can sit in the sink before it's annoying, and how to mark food that is not for sharing.
Not only do I have to navigate apartment life this year, but I'm beginning an even adultier task: Grad School Applications.
I am currently studying theatre performance and history, and I plan to go on to grad school to study theatre history. I know what you're thinking, "Theatre history? What is that? What do you even do with that?" Well, we'll get to that later. The important thing is that, because of this being a little-known area of study, it's not like every school has a graduate program for it. In fact, most don't. So, I have seven options and I'm just going to apply to all of them and see what happens. But seven applications is a lot of writing, a lot of work, and, oh yes, none of the schools I'm applying to are anywhere near any of my family. In fact, of the seven states that house these seven schools, I have visited two. Plus, all of the schools are in cities, and I have always lived in a small town. Which means, whatever happens, it's all new territory for me. And when I get there I have to do things like handle utility bills, get to a grocery story by myself, and sleep in an apartment with no one else in it, which I think will be the weirdest, as I've never truly had that much space to myself.
Basically, for the next few years, even eating breakfast will be an adventure for me, and I'll daily have to pretend that I know what I'm doing. The good news? I'm a theatre major. We literally study pretending.
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