Two RAs and a U-Haul

 Thursday August 25, 2011

The day began early, around six in the morning. My house was abuzz and after we got everything loaded into the U-Haul and my mom’s car, we were ready to go. The only missing piece was Logan Miller, my high school friend and soon-to-be roommate. Once he arrived with his family we began our longer than usual trip to what would become our home away from home for the next four years, four and a half for one of us. The “longer than usual” was a result of two things: my dad having to drive a U-Haul and the continued existence of water covering much of I-29 that forced us to take a slower, less direct route. 

Our five car caravan pulled up to Dieterich at 9am to just hilarious faces on what I now know to be Cat Crew. As I mentioned before, we used a U-Haul to transport a lot of our stuff. However, it wasn’t because we had that much stuff, we just didn’t want to try to obnoxiously cram everything into cars. The U-Haul wasn’t even really that full. The friendly people with green shirts and yellow bins didn’t know any of that and thought that we were going to try and fit a U-Haul full of stuff into a 14’ 8” by 12’ 5” room. 

We left our team of family members with the Cat Crew to bring our stuff up to our room and went inside to check in. In the span of about 30 minutes Logan and I met both of our Resident Assistants (RAs). These two guys (names Jake and James) went on to play a big part in one of the best years of my life and are still some of my best friends today. 

After we got everything up in to our room and one of our lofts put together, Logan and I told sent our families away to Wal-Mart with a shopping list so we could put our room together alone. After we got everything put away where we wanted, we decided to test the other loft, the one that Logan and I had put together ourselves. Logan jumped up in his bed and his bed almost fell through on top of the television. The initial reaction was fear, followed by laughter. Logan climbed down and we figured out what we had done wrong and fixed it. He only fell through the loft 2 more times over our freshman year, kind of a bummer actually. It was always a memorable experience.

The goodbyes came somewhere around 1pm. After being an RA myself I realize how record-setting our move in process was. Our parents being gone just after lunch probably happens for 5% of freshmen each year. It was emotional of course, but I know the quick departure was good for my mom. She probably cried much of the way home, but better than her sitting in Maryville thinking about having to leave me there.

Soon after, Logan left to get his books and laptop. Getting them on the first day? What a loser. So I just sat in the room and watched some tv, trying to take in the fact that this was going to be my home for the next 8 months. My door was of course open, and one of those guys I met earlier popped his head in and asked why I was watching tv in the dark. I asserted to him that I prefer watching tv in the dark. He reintroduced himself as Jake and asked if he could sit down. He had a Husker shirt on and looked friendly enough so I said yes. We went on to talk for the next hour or so, a lot about our commonalities: Husker football, growing up in Omaha and he asked what my church background was like. I also remember him asserting that he had worked really hard on his wall decorations and would be really upset if I tore any of them down. As he left he reminded me about our floor meeting that night.

Much of the afternoon was spent losing in FIFA to Logan and meeting some of our neighbors. The guy that lived right next to us was a big FIFA fan himself, so he came over and played a couple of games. For dinner, Jake and James rounded up everyone that was finished moving in and took us to the Union for dinner to show us the ropes. Jake told us we should never, never use a tray because nothing screamed “I am a freshman” more than using a tray in the Union. 

After dinner, it was time for that first floor meeting. Jake had us all state our name, hometown, and favorite cereal. His name: Jake. His hometown: Omaha, Nebraska. Favorite Cereal: Peanut Butter Crunch. If you haven’t noticed by now, Jake appeared to be much more “in charge” than James. That didn’t change at all during the course of my freshman year. Later on in the year, James liked to refer to himself as the “pal” of our floor while Jake was actually the RA. Anyways, the meeting included a lot of rules and it’s pretty much all a blur. Plus, after leading two of those meetings myself I could probably vomit the whole floor meeting to you, but that is really, really uninteresting.