Freshman fall was a blur of anonymous faces-too many "Annies" and "Mikes" to remember. If you forgot someone's name the following day, you would hope a simple "Hey" would do. The Annex was known as the room with the enormous eight ball, and the social dorms were hopelessly unidentifiable by name. Parties consisted of all of Stearns and James, freshmen arriving in several waves, unable to physically detach themselves from their roommates. Brushing your teeth while a guy stood in the urinal and taking showers with merely a plastic curtain (if you could call it that) separating you from your unhygienic neighbor were only a few perks of dorm life.

Then came the problem of locking yourself out (especially if you didn't have a roommate), losing your ID card, losing your keys in a pile of leaves and actually having to be responsible for items that determine whether you can eat or sleep. Laundry is a topic unto itself. Which was the washer and which was the dryer, and did you really have to use Tide? Then, there were the useless items my mom thought essential, but literally gathered dust in the closet all year, including, the ever-essential Lint-Buster, the fabulous "Light 'N Easy" G.E. iron and the mini ironing board. Let's just say the police would have had trouble finding any fingerprints on those items.

When my parents disappeared from the scene, I began my oblivious life. I entered a world in which personal conversations were overrated and my relationship with my iMac blossomed. Instant Messenger became my vehicle of communication, downloading mp3s, my favorite pastime, stalking people via the student directory and PlanWorld, my way of connecting with the rest of the school. However, staring into a 12-inch screen for extended periods of time is unhealthy, so I occasionally resorted to old-fashioned friendships.

When most freshmen come to college, their first and foremost concern is how they will connect with their peers. Immediately, we are thrown into a lottery of names and faces, told that we are among the best in the country, that one of us was in the "Guinness Book of World Records," while most were valedictorians, had straight 1600s, 4.0 GPAs and were tri-varsity captains and pianists all at the same time.

As I sat in Buckley Recital Hall, listening to the deans rattle off percentages, I couldn't help but worry that I was outmatched. I was not that well-rounded-I couldn't shoot hoops and play Bach in the same breath, and the closest I had come to Guinness was, well, through a certain beverage. Quotas and percentages, however, became obscured by a sea of faces, and the sea of faces eventually became personalities.

By December, the confusion narrowed down, I actually landed the forks and knives in the right bins and punched my code into the keypad only once. Snow, Ice Ban and the endless beep of midnight snowplows filled most of the winter. Hibernation, winter slumps, and Memorial Hill's paralyzing sledding seemed everlasting. "What is snow?" some Jamaicans asked; "Why New England?" the Californians complained; and the Bostonians' response? "Suck it up!" It only takes one winter in New England to prove that weather is as big a part of the curriculum here as English or history.

After room draw-the treacherous process that rips freshmen apart, dissolving their friendships- occurs in the heat of Keefe Campus Center our names are once again obscured in numbers, and we are ranked. This time, however, at random. Our hearts palpitate as we sit in the Front Room, watching SHAC members, with their professional walkie-talkies stroll down the red carpet, dry erase markers in hand. The voice over the walkie-talkie is broken up, however, we piece together the words, "Crossett, closed to men." Ahh, the joys of gender working in our favor!

All of a sudden, we are stuck looking back. I would like to deny the foolish mistakes that go hand-in-hand with being a member of the '04 club, and erase some of those Sunday mornings when your pounding head acts as an alarm clock, and you go back to sleep after brunch. However, to deny these mistakes would be to deny my freshman year in college.

I would not trade my place as a rising sophomore for the world. Reliving freshman orientation, going back to being anonymous and insecure, returning to presentation and pretending now seems like a nightmare. At the same time, I wish I could stay a freshman forever, lacking the responsibility, able to make mistakes and be excused because I don't know better. And I miss being independent of my parents, yet still having my parents fully dependent on me. (Preview: parents get used to your absence, and fail to provide V.I.P. treatment. You get lumped into a lazy sloth of a college student instead of their prized daughter that got into a prized institution.)

Although I am caught between the ignorant bliss of freshman year and the added responsibilities of sophomore year, I realize there are certain compromises one must make: the Californians must adapt to blizzards, the sophomores must make room for the freshman, and my personal compromise is to leave my single behind for a one-room double.