Breaking Bread

And thus snow fell on Winooski, just in time to blanket the school in a layer of white powder and perilous ice. The two Christmas trees in the Quad seemed much more festive draped in their white robing, and it seemed to reënforce the notion that students were leaving—and soon—before they were snowed in completely.

If no one in your family has been to college or a boarding school before, you don't know what to expect; at least I didn't. High school prepares you for college the same way Madden on Xbox prepares you for the NFL: primarily wishful thinking. Virtually anyone with a pulse can graduate from my high school, and I know a few people really tested that limit. In high school, students worry primarily about where they can get accepted and the prestige of the school, as dictated by some very asinine rankings. Only the very best counsilors at my high school concerned themselves with emphasizing what makes a school "fit," advice too often ignored.

I attend Saint Michael's College, a small Catholic, liberal arts college in Vermont. In my first semester, I met a girl who applied to Saint Michael's, was accepted, and enrolled without ever visiting the campus. Most of the other schools she applied to were large universities, and—lo and behold—she transferred to the University of Maine after the semester. But I digress. As I said, it's difficult to estimate what college is like if you have no one to tell you war stories.

The French have a word for friend: copain, which means "with bread." I'm not sure how that varies from ami, but I suspect it is more formal: the former being "one with whom I break bread" and the latter being "one I like or love." From that same root we get our English company, or "those who eat business lunches together." That's the part they don't tell you about college. The part that really gets you. The part that makes the "fit" more important than the tuition, the prestige, or the endowment (although these things may help cultivate a {sometimes erroneous} sense of Fit).

I wasn't really prepared to live with my peers. I wasn't ready to meet for dinner and break bread with them. I wasn't ready to coördinate my schedule with them to make time for otherwise needless activities. I wasn't ready to have 2:00 am showings of Disney movies, followed by an 8:00 class. I wasn't ready to have Wednesday lunches to read The "Defner" to see whose hall had more liquor violations. I wasn't ready to recite Lil' Jon's street ballad "Get Low" as love poetry. Most of all, I wasn't prepared for the word "skeet" to enter my vernacular, especially as a compliment.

I was blown away. I wasn't ready for my definition of 'relationship' to morph from someone you saw at school to someone you lived with, ate with, and laughed with. I wasn't ready to fit in. I wasn't ready to Fit.

And, as snow now blankets Winooski Park, I can't imagine I've only known these people for three and a half months. All I know is that we are going to go completely stir-crazy without each other over break.