Confinement

There is something so small, so manufactured, so unreal about my life here in Rochester. I never felt it before I went abroad, but living on my own—or at least as “on my own” as I ever have—in England, living away from campus, in the community, has made me feel much more confined now that I am back living on Rochester’s self-contained campus.

Without knowledge to the contrary, a student might think that this existence—going to class, going to the gym, perhaps going to an on-campus job—is all there is to Real Life. In reality, though, living in a prepaid cocoon that is cleaned for you once-a-week (also known as a dorm), working for managers who are desperate for student-workers and will therefore rarely fire anyone, frequenting a “free” gym at my leisure, and having everything within walking distance is really quite absurd. What is even more absurd is the way that all of the buildings fit together uniformly as if they are all part of one jigsaw puzzle in which you, as a student, are trapped. If you don’t own a car and need to go shopping, you are “permitted” to go off campus only as often as the “bus” will take you—that is, three times a week (Wed., Sat., or Sun.) at the designated Rochester Shuttle pick-up/drop-off times.

However, so long as no disasters occur, everything you should ever need is available on campus: prepared food, canned food, sweatshirts, pens, batteries, cough drops. In fact, now that there is a little corner store in Sue B. Anthony (the freshman residence hall), a student could literally stay inside his/her dorm all semester if he/she wanted. There would be plenty of food (with all-you-can-eat at Danforth Dining Center, the Hillside coffee shop, and the mini-Corner Store all in its basement), the obviously necessary dorm room for sleeping, functional bathrooms right down the hall, and—of course—perpetual Internet access. What more could a student want? Next thing you know, the campus post office will move into that building, and everyone can have their books shipped directly to their dorm rooms; no library or bookstore necessary. (Although, if someone really and truly wanted to hibernate, he/she could get a friend to pick up his/her mail. Just give hand over the CPU box key and offer a little incentive, like a quarter of the required meal plan that no average freshman will ever finish.)

I find myself wandering around the same places day-in and day-out: specific classrooms, the gym, the library, my dorm room. After a while, it is hard to think outside of this routine. Get up. Dress in Java City attire. Go to work at Hillside. Change in the Danforth bathroom. Eat in the library. Go to class. Change. Go to the gym. Shower. Eat in the dorm. Read. Sleep. Repeat. It becomes difficult to realize that anything outside of this routine does or can exist. I see the same people, some of whom I recognize and yet do not actually know at all. I see the same places, sometimes dirtier, sometimes cleaner, yet very much the same.

I suppose this sameness and familiarity is true no matter where you live; it is the consequence of settling into any kind of community. Yet, everything feels so much more compressed, so much more isolated on a college campus. We really are living in our own little bubble here, with an occasional foray out into the rest of Rochester. How odd that I originally desired this. Living At College made me feel like I had finally entered the Real World and was succeeding On My Own, when I had just entered a new part of the world, and a self-contained one, at that. College life offers a new, different sort of safety and security that seems wild and free when we first embark upon it. Now, it just feels like an artificial community. I am in Real World Training, and the training wheels are about to come-off.