I Want(ed) to be a Part of it…

After the unfairness that was MSU’s not letting me into their final two years of the ID program there were many options I could take. I could pursue Interior Design which is what I really wanted to do (but didn’t want to leave MSU), or I could go into advertising and finish up my degree at MSU with all my friends. 

After much debating, and realizing that none of my bests were going back to MSU either, I decided to pursue interior design at another college. Pratt, Parsons, Harrington Institute in Chicago, and NYIT all were options but there was only one school I wanted–no, NEEDED–to go to: the Fashion Institute of Techology. 

My parents reminded me how I didn’t get into MSU’s program, what made me think I could get into an incredibly selective and hard to get into program such as FITs? Apply to other places, Ashley! They urged me.

I was stubborn and determined and refused. 

You know how when you are in high school and applying to colleges you are told that if you get a big envelope that means you got in and a small one meant rejection?

I received a small envelope from FIT and being that I was, by now, an EXPERT at applying to colleges, I was so disappointed. It was too late to apply to any other schools, I had fucked myself in the ass and I was told I had to enjoy it. 

I made my mom open the letter and it was the start of a long and troublesome relationship with FIT. I had gotten in, the little fuckers just liked to mess with its applicants. (I learned that this was their technique in EVERYTHING)

I didn’t get into the bachelors program however, and for the next few months I took to stalking the head of the department to meet with him to try to force my way into the upper tier of the program instead of restarting those four years all over again. I finally met with him and of course he laughed at me, and that was that. I was stuck as a freshman. AGAIN. 

About a month before I left for the big apple I was online just goofing off when some stranger instant messaged me. We talked, he sent me some pictures and I thought he was pretty cute. It took him 3 hours of convincing me on the phone to actually meet him (I was a bit of an internetaphob–i had been stalked via the internet prior to this in high school, when I first got on AOL and didn’t know what the hell i was doing). I dragged my friend down to a more lively town half way between the two of us (he lived in the middle of the state, myself on the western) and met him. 

Soon I was seeing him a couple times a week for dinner, drinks, rendez-vous in his bedroom. I spent New Years Eve with him and his friends, a month after we had started dating we started talking about taking a vacation together to Disney (he worked for an affiliate of ABC which is owned by Disney), and then february hit and I moved to New York City.

Dorm living there was much different than dorm living at my big state schools I had attended prior. There wasn’t an open door policy, people didn’t mingle in common areas or in the halls, they didn’t drop by just to say hi. Everyone mainly kept to themselves which made it difficult to meet anyone. Luckily I lived with a great roommate, London, who was very fun to live with (and go out with) and was by far the best roommate I had lived with up until that point. We would take trips to decorate our rooms, we would wage wars on Lucifer together, get supremely drunk together and stumble home. 

The latter part of that paragraph rarely happened however because, also unlike MSU, FIT’s interior design program was a bitch that just wouldn’t stop hoing itself out to us. I had more work than I had ever had before, the stress was high and it was the primary goal of the head of the interior design department to fail us all. It wasn’t soon after we started that I watched all the 18 and 19 year olds drop out, wanting the social aspect of college and just not finding it at FIT. 

If I thought it was hard that first semester, I was in for a mighty shock in the upcoming semesters. I transversed these years with the same class full of girls. We started with 25 and by the time associates came along, we were down to eleven. Among those eleven was a girl who I didn’t think I would ever get along with on the first day. She had blond highlighted hair, a fake tan, perfect makeup and acrylic nails. She was what some people would call….a JAP. 

Surprisingly she became one of my best friends, eventually she lost the fake nails, lost the tan, lost the blond highlights. This was all because we didn’t have the time to indulge on the things we used to and all our money was now invested in thousands of dollars of drafting/art supplies, books and starbucks coffee to help keep our sanity (or in LJ’s case, pot) in check. The first semester I would spend every other weekend in CT at The Ex’s house, then it became every weekend. My second semester my luck with roommates returned and I got stuck in a four roommate situation in two bedrooms in quite possibly the SMALLEST dorm room/apartment in NYC. My roommate slept 5 feet from my head and didn’t get along with one of the other girls across the kitchen. I was meant to be there a year but after 3 major projects in which my father had to pick me and all my supplies up and transport me to CT so I could work on them, and having to go visit my boyfriend on every weekend because he wouldn’t come there, I took off for my very first apartment the next semester. 

Because of my crazy schedule, and the fact that my boyfriend lived in CT, I didn’t get to live the New York life. Every friday I was boarding metro north to go out to his place, returning on sunday night after a teary goodbye. These were the good days of our relationship, before things went sour. I spent all of january searching desperately for an apartment and finally landed on in Hell’s Kitchen, a cute neighborhood with awesome restaurants and excellent location for me in regards to school. I was just far enough away, but close enough that I could walk to class if I wanted.

It was in this small apartment, with its lofted bed, high ceilings, brick walls, and miniature kitchen, that I discovered what it meant to be a poor college student in NYC. I couldn’t work during school, a byproduct of being in class 8 hours or more a day, with about 20 hours of homework to do each night. Grocery stores in Manhattan are expensive, no, RIDICULOUS. The closest grocery store to me was Whole Foods and my boyfriend often would buy me groceries if he happened to be there because he was just that nice. (I wonder what happened to that part of him…) But he more than often wouldn’t and being that I had a strange craving for peanut butter that semester, I ended up eating just peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese and pasta. It wasn’t terribly healthy but I lost 10 lbs and looked the best I had in my entire life.

The last month at that apartment I lived off of 50 dollars, the only money I had left in my checking account. My parents moved me home in June since they wanted me to commute from home since I was always in CT with The Ex anyway, so move home I did. The summer was spent working at my first interior design job in Hartford, being that The Ex’s home was closer to Hartford, I moved my clothes there, got myself a key, and lived there for the summer. In August, after seeing my parents on weekends occasionally (who also hated the fact I was basically living with my boyfriend in nowheresville CT), they sprung the fact that their house, the same house I had spent my teenage years in, had been sold and they were moving to Michigan. To take care of my sick grandmother. 

I wasn’t surprised they were moving, but it did hit me hard that now I was going to be all alone on the east coast, with no family nearby. I decided not to move back to NYC, but instead to another, smaller city in CT, closer to the city than The Ex’s but more suburban. 

I became a commuter.

(To be continued…)