Published on 2024-02-23 14:40 by Sam Wu

Madelyn Keller

Back home, I know all of my neighbors. We’ll all casually wave and when someone moves in onto our block, we all make an effort to go out and meet them. I’ll babysit a ton of their kids and we’ll have potlucks together.

Here I feel like even in the dorms when you’re kind of encouraged to meet each other more, I hardly interacted with a lot of the people I live next to. That threw me a little bit. I don’t know, I feel like here more people mind their business, whereas in the south, it’s different.

Freshman year, there was one time I was walking around Beacon Hill, the really rich area, and I was really homesick. I was crying. But I was wearing a mask nobody knew me out here. But if I had done that back home, even in the really rich areas, they would have probably thought I was trespassing, but someone would have come up and been like, “Are you ok, why are you upset?”, whereas here no one bugged me, which is actually what I was looking for.

But I feel like walking is the only place you can be alone. I hadn’t really accounted for the total lack of privacy. You share a room with somebody and there’s a suite. Even if on the street or in public transit, there’s rarely a time when you’re completely alone. When I’m angry or frustrated or upset, I like to be alone with my thoughts and there’s no chance for that. The best thing I’ve found is going on a ton of walks and listening to music.

Written by Sam Wu