Anyone in Ann Arbor knows that the search for housing starts at least a year before you move in. So the second my friends and I got back to campus as juniors, we were already thinking about where to spend our senior year.
We looked at just a few houses before landing on the front steps of the perfect one. It was painted white and sat three stories tall, with elegant wood floors and a porch swing I thought was only real in movies. We immediately told the landlord we would take it. Unfortunately, it was only then that he let us know a different group toured it yesterday and had until tomorrow to make a decision.
The six of us exchanged nervous glances. We needed this house. How could we possibly prolong our search after finding the best one on campus? Before we went home that night, even the non-religious ones of us promised to pray that it would be ours. Low and behold, I woke up to a text informing us the other girls did, in fact, want the house. It was gone. My heart dropped as we agreed to keep searching.
Discouraged, we toured another of the landlord’s houses: 534 Hill. In short, the house was not impressive. Instead of wood floors lay a musty carpet of an unidentifiable color. The rooms were dark and obstructed by horrible red movie theater curtains. And the front porch could barely fit a chair, let alone a swing. But it could fit the six of us, and after learning the hard way that houses get taken quickly, we very reluctantly signed the lease.
Nearly a year later, on May 1st, 2021, a dozen people squeezed onto the tiny porch, shoulder to shoulder. The red curtains on the walls were replaced by hundreds of funny quotes on colorful sticky notes and a huge poster of some guy we met in Paris. The brown (?) carpet was full of a million more stains than it started with, each one a memory from a birthday party or Bachelor night. My eyes burned from a week of tears that preceded moving out of the best home I’ve ever known.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe I was ever convinced that our house wasn’t exactly where we needed to be. How could what seemed like the end of the world become not only a good thing, but the absolute best?
I’ve thought a lot about what to write as I reflect on graduation. There are so many memories and lessons to choose from after four years of highs and lows. But as I tried to pick just one, I realized that nearly all of them go back to the journey that led us to 534.
After being told college is the best years of your life, I was horrifyingly disappointed. My college experience was anything but perfect. Each year acquainted me with a new hardship: freshman loneliness, sophomore stress, junior heartbreak, and, finally, senior goodbyes. I cannot even count the times I lay awake at night and wished for something, anything different. My wishes were never granted.
But now that it’s done, I don’t think I would change a thing. Between the widening cracks of my brokenness grew resiliency, compassion, vulnerability, confidence, and strength even (especially) at my worst. I was lucky enough to grow right beside a small army of best friends, watching them each also struggle and strengthen in their own ways. Events and circumstances that once seemed impossible became realities that unexpectedly planted just what we needed to rise.
If only I could go back and tell my younger self that the loneliness, stress, heartbreak, and senior year house would all turn out okay. If only I knew that those were the same things that would make me the person I am today.
I realize now that in our hardest moments, what we need isn’t wishes, but instead, trust that we are exactly where we need to be.
Admittedly, leaving Ann Arbor has left me yet again with a paralyzing fear of an uncertain future ahead. But if college has taught me anything at all, it's that hard things have a funny way of working themselves out, while just about always making you stronger in the process.
Walking through an empty 534 Hill was the hardest thing I’ve done in a while. It’s horrifying to think of anyone else’s French lover on the wall or spills that aren’t from my roommates. But I am lucky enough to be able to take the most special things from the house with me, like the very people and memories that made it home in the first place.
I don’t know if college will be the best four years of my life, but it will sure give the years to come a run for their money. Because maybe “best” isn’t about pretty wood floors and a porch swing. Maybe “best” is just a brown carpet, with a whole bunch of perfect stains.