My First 24 Hours in NYC

The start of something new.

My college experience, riddled with COVID, has been a bit unconventional. I haven’t had that many roommates, and therefore haven’t really learned the best practices for living in close quarters with someone.

So when the alarm of the girl sleeping in her bed six feet away from mine didn’t wake her up even after going off for 10 minutes, I figured I should just leave to get some fruit.

I’ve had my fair share of people I’ve shared spaces with, we just normally had our own bedrooms. My first real roommate was in Madrid while studying abroad, but even then it didn’t feel like we were really roommates. Maeve got a boyfriend and slept at his apartment for about three months before they broke up. Plus, we were always traveling. There was no time period where we were both consistently in the room.

The last time I got on a plane and flew to a new city to completely change my life was when I moved to Madrid, so getting on the plane to NYC was a very weird feeling. I couldn’t conceptualize the idea that there were no customs, I would be able to speak the language when I landed, and the flight was only three hours long. My subconscious brain was still thinking about getting on a connected flight to begin the real journey as we were descending into NYC and I could see the skyline outside of my window.

I arrived about five hours ago. It was a bumpy ride into the city, it appeared to be a cloudy day. It was then that I realized I don’t really know what weather characterized a summer in NYC. I know that in July it gets unbearably hot from the tall buildings and cement, but is that the same in June? NYC is so much farther North than anywhere I have ever lived before.

I don’t mind turbulence on the descent so much. It’s like as you descend, you pass this threshold, like you’re closer to the ground so you feel if something were to happen, you would be okay because there’s not that much of a way to fall. What I do mind though, is feeling as though I’m about to crash land into a body of water.

I was watching out the window, and we were so close to the ground I knew I would feel the impact of the wheels any second now. All of the sudden, we were over water. A substantially large body of water that looked to be deep and even had waves from the blowing wind. I tried to strain to see out the front of the plane, but all I could see at my angle out the window was water. We were so close to the ground, I figured the wheels must have been touching the water. I couldn’t see out the front of the plane to see where we were headed, all I could see was water surrounding me. I thought that the flight attendants would have to make an announcement if we were about to crash land into water, but maybe they were just as frightened as I. It doesn’t help that I have a major fear of water. A grand aversion to water. I literally saw my life flash before my eyes as I tried to remember how to When I was little in swim lessons, I would cry until my mom took me home, and as a result never really learned how to swim. I hate water in my face, even when we would have to play soccer in the rain I would grow increasingly anxious that I was wiping the rain droplets off my face with a wet jersey.

I am happy to announce that we indeed did not crash land into a body of water. Apparently, the airport designers thought it would be a good idea to put a lake right at the beginning of the landing strip. A real “Welcome to New York” moment to get your heart beating. The LaGuardia airport will forever be on my hit list for that one. On my taxi ride into the city, I Googled what happens if a plane crashes in water. Apparently, they float. I’m no scientist, but I did take 6th grade physics and I’m not sure I fully believe that the plane isn’t too dense to float.

I wasn’t the first one to get to our dorm, which looked exactly like it did in the pictures. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a kitchen table. Nothing bigger than what you need, a perfectly compact NYC dorm. We were assigned to a dorm and then to a bedroom inside the dorm with one other roommate. I tried to look up my roommates before today, but even though they all have unique names, I couldn’t find too much information. A lot of private Instagrams or articles in different languages. Two girls came out of the bedroom next to mine when they heard me wheeling my suitcases in, Maia and Acacia. They share a bedroom and had already unpacked their things. My roommate, Aadhya, unpacked all her things earlier, but had already left the dorm.

I’m aware that my time in NYC is going to go by incredibly fast, and I’m aware that I need to poke my head up from the trenches of school and work to make sure I connect with the people around me. This summer I have a number of resolutions, one of which is to be more outgoing with people, and that starts with the two friendly-looking girls standing in front of me, asking if I wanted to get lunch with them. So I ditched my suitcases in my room to unpack later, grabbed my sweatshirt, and got on the elevator with them to head back down from our 13th story dorm.

On the drive into the city, I had seen a Petco dog adoption event in Union Square, so the three of us got Chipotle and took it to the park to eat before walking through crowds of cute dogs doing agility runs on courses designed to look like the NYC skyline. Immediately, Acacia and Maia were incredibly easy to get along with and we walked through the city and went shopping at Michaels like we had known each other for months. We were out for over two hours before heading back to the dorms. Both of them had international flights today and were tired. While they slept, I unpacked my things, then got a bagel to eat in Washington Square Park and talked to my mom.

She gets concerned for me sometimes when she hears that I am spending time sitting in parks to delay going home. It stemmed from when I was very mentally unstable in Madrid due to the school situation and feeling like any kind of human interaction, including that from my roommates, would send me off the edge. I would sit in the park at the bottom of my street for hours, in this inbetween state of dissociation and hyper awareness of the things happening around me. I would stay there far into the night, hoping that by the time I went back to my apartment, everyone would be watching TV or asleep by then. Madrid is a safe city so being out late like that was fine, but definitely not something I should have been partaking in nonetheless. When Mother Hen heard that I was sitting in Washington Square Park because I didn’t want to go back to my apartment, all of her sensors starting beeping and flashing red as she began to use her stern voice, telling me that if NYC was going to be a situation like that, I needed to come home right away.

I laughed at her concern in the way only a child could, telling her that I didn’t want to go back home to the apartment because I wanted to be in the city for as long as possible. In the park where everyone was skateboarding and doing yoga as if nobody else was around, and selling their mixtapes, I felt like I was at home.

Eventually I did go back though, where Aadhya was sleeping, so I elected to take a shower, and write in bed. Which is how we get back to the blaring alarm that kept going off. Maia and Acacia were still asleep, so they couldn’t give me any advice on what to do. So I decided to avoid the situation and head back out to the streets to get myself some strawberries from Whole Foods.

It had just finished raining, so it was a bit chilly outside and clouds were still rolling low into the city. Despite being in downtown Manhattan, the streets were surprisingly empty and the sun was beginning to set. I took the long way home through neighborhoods, holding the strawberry container in one hand, eating them with the other. The streets smelled like a mix between trash and expensive perfume, smog and laundry detergent wafting out of the apartment window. I realize that I once again find myself at 20 years old, living in a city that is completely foreign to me, feeling immensely engrossed in the moment and in my being in a way I do not usually feel.

When I returned home, the alarm was off. I quickly drifted off to sleep, even though it was only 8:30.

My first day of fashion merchandising class was today. I also met my other two roommates, Sonia and Tabia. I woke up when they came in last night, but they both arrived late. We got to know each other over breakfast, and immediately all exchanged numbers to start a group chat. Just like with Acacia and Maia, the conversation felt completely natural. There were no awkward silences, and people were rambling just the right amount about just the right things. In the first 30 minutes of meeting Sonia, I knew that she suspected the 4’11” boy she used to go to school with that she referred to as Mr. Junior Conservative (for constantly touting his Republican opinions on American politics despite living in Canada) of having romantic affairs with his twin sister, but I did not know her last name.

Ten minutes before our classes started, we all ran into the elevator together and took a first day of school selfie, making plans to meet for lunch. Maia and Aadhya were both in the architecture course, Sonia and Maia in design sewing and construction, and Tabia was alone, like me, in graphic design. I like Tabia a lot, even though we haven’t talked much. She appears to be a lot like me, and was mostly listening at the kitchen table rather than sharing her own conspiracy theories and anecdotes. 

I was one of the first people to arrive at my class. The professor immediately characterized herself as the head woman in charge, with style. She was wearing a brown blazer suit with a voluminous scarf around her neck and when you speak, she looks at you with a humorous smirk on her face, like she knows something that you don’t know. I love her already. We have three major projects due each Friday of the course, and if you don’t already know that I’m going to go above and beyond to impress her, then you haven’t been here for very long.

At lunch, the roommates of 1300 did meet up again to eat chicken fingers and have preliminary talks about our classes. Another girl joined us, Sloane, from Boston in class with Sonia and Maia. As we were eating, a large group of college-aged looking boys walked in wearing suits, none of them speaking to one another. The look on all of their faces was the same, something between exhaustions, disgust, and boredom. They sat down at the table next to us, and I couldn’t help but take myself out of the conversation to stare at them. According to their name tags, they were interns at Jefferies, therefore most likely doing investment banking. Though most might not believe it, my second choice after going to art school this summer was working in investment banking. Not necessarily that investment banking is #2 on my list of interests, but when you study economics and finance, it’s one of those jobs that people make you feel crazy for not wanting to do. I remember my application to Jeffries too. I had to write a whole paragraph about why I wanted to do investment banking, and why I was interested in Jeffries. Thinking back, I think it would be a better application to a creative writing internship instead of finance.

Seeing them at the table over was like I was seeing myself in two different universes. One where I chose to use my economics degree for art, and one where I chose to use it for finance. Right now in my life, I’m glad to be sitting at the table that I am. Especially because in this universe tomorrow, I get to go to the Met with my class to see the Karl Lagerfeld exhibit.

After class we all went grocery shopping together and made fun of the way our resident Canadian, Sonia, pronounces pasta. Getting food constitutes having silverware and bowls and plates and things of that matter, so we went to Bed Bath and Beyond thinking we could get deals since they are officially bankrupt. Since we’re only in this dorm for three weeks, a stack of 100 cups for 50 cents was good enough to check the box for bowls, plates, and cups. One pot for boiling water, and two pieces of each silverware was enough for us.

We took a walk through Washington Square Park and ended the night with the seven of us (including Sloane) sitting at our kitchen table, rambling on into the night about wherever the conversation seemed to flow. And while it may be way too late right now to think about waking up tomorrow morning at 6 am, I have a feeling, and a yearning that, this will happen every night in the three weeks to come.

Yours truly,
Calihan