I come home to my apartment. I drop my keys in my room. And then I rot.
I'm a sophomore, which means I have the fortunate pleasure of living at Vista del Sol, which is the Barrett, The Honors College second-year apartments. While it comes with its upsides of our own kitchen and bathrooms, there are certain things that being in an apartment complex doesn't come with — like old connections.
I don't mean to say I've lost my friends — I've definitely been able to maintain the most important friendships I have. But, I've lost connections with the people I used to occasionally see, wave to or just catch up with. It's a different type of loss.
Living in a dorm and having a communal dining hall allowed me to always stay out of my room last year. I was always out, partially because I wasn't best friends with my roommates, and partially because it was much nicer to be with other people. Honors Hall was my new home, where I'd stay up until midnight working on assignments and getting all my tasks done in the common spaces.
Hangouts with friends were almost always impromptu because I'd see them and then we'd decide if we wanted to grab dinner from the dining hall or head to a dorm to hang out.
And even meeting new people was so random. Whether it was a quick game of pingpong in the common recreational area, or just sitting down at the same table studying or eating, new connections were easily made. I could blame it on the freshman excitement to make new friends, but this was a regular occurrence that happened from August until May last year.
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But with a new home comes a new environment. Now that I live with a couple of my best friends, I'm not always out of my dorm anymore. In fact, I find solace in my room much more than I did last year — I open my apartment door to see my friends and roommates hanging out. My room has also become my new Honors Hall — the place I go to lock in and crank assignments out.
Hangouts are no longer impromptu. They have now become group chats of, "When are you free?" and, "Oh, that day doesn’t work for me."
Meeting new people has become something that has been limited to new club members and new classmates. There are no more random sightings in the dining hall, and studying at a communal area is much more limited at Vista.
And I know this change only becomes harder. I'm still on campus, which is great to still feel like a part of the ASU community. I also still live near and around my best friends, so heading to each other's apartments is still a viable option.
But in the future, those hallways will be replaced by streets, and walking up the stairs to my friends' apartment might be a streetcar ride away.
It only gets harder from here.
But I've learned that there's a beauty within this change. While it's hard and feels lonely, I've learned that we're all growing in our own ways in college. We've learned to go past a dorm-like living situation to an actual apartment complex where we might find our future selves living in one day.
And while things have changed, there are many things that have stayed the same. It's a coin toss with what has changed and what hasn't. But if anything, the connections I completely lost were maybe never meant to go beyond those simple interactions. The connections that are meant to stay have continued to thrive — and maybe in and of itself, that is what is beautiful.
I grab my keys and I leave my apartment. I'm heading down to meet some old friends and our conversations continue as if nothing has changed.
And that's on being a sophomore.
Edited by Andrew Dirst, Sophia Ramirez and Natalia Jarrett.
Reach the reporter at gachatht@asu.edu.
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Gokul is a sophomore studying actuarial science. This is his third semester with The State Press.
