I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in haunted
houses. But I do enjoy scary movies (not gory ones, the ones with suspense). As
a child, R.L. Stine was the man to me (seriously, I loved reading his books
more than sleeping. I can probably blame my strained myopic eyes on him, because
I would stay up all night reading his Fear Street and Goosebumps books, only a
few inches from my face, next to my night light). My love for suspense thrillers paired with my
over-active imagination has me compulsively thinking of scenes from scary
movies when I am doing things like closing my eyes in the shower, or closing a
door with a mirror on it. I sometimes feel that when I open my eyes, or swing
the door something terrifying is waiting to pop up. Obviously, that never happens,
but it terrifies me anyway.
Ah, soo many memories..
So during my first night in my new apartment, I found out
the many quirks of living in an old (but beautiful) Georgian mansion built in
the beginning of the 20th century. For example, the outlets are not
three pronged, but two pronged. The bathroom has a total of zero outlets. There
is no air-conditioning. The basement is where the laundry is, and you have to
walk down a stone staircase into a dark, cold room not unlike how I imagine a
catacomb would be. Despite these quirks, I love it. It is a large apartment with
high ceilings, elegant details, and dark wood floors. It is pretty much the
best apartment ever. But one quirk, which appeared my first night here, was
particularly unsettling.
I had just turned out all the lights and settled into bed
when all of the sudden the bathroom light flashed on. It is one of those pull
string ones so it was extra creepy looking. The string was completely still and
the bulb sent a menacing, yellow glow into my bedroom. Thank God my boyfriend was
here helping me move in, because I would have just died. Sure, I always psych myself out and imagine scary things happening, but they aren’t supposed to actually happen. So after we went back and forth as to who should go turn it off, we decided to go together. As soon as
my boyfriend’s foot touched the ground, however, the lights turned off leaving
us in total darkness. So I thought, Great.. just.. perfect. I am living in a
real-life haunted mansion. Which, considering a modest stipend and my inability
to release myself from year-long contract living in this apartment, could
complicate my grad experience.
This is the light:
But, it turns out the pull string wasn’t pulled enough to be
“off” and after we fixed this, it has since not happened. So my apartment still
remains to be the best apartment ever. Until one day when I swing my mirror
covered door and see something behind me.. Okay, enough joking. It is starting
to get dark.
There are some things that are scarier than my imaginary
haunting though.. like, the reality of school starting tomorrow. I do not know
where the summer went! But all the Yale Graduate School orientation
events/tours I attended over the last week allowed me to adjust to the idea better. I
had a tour of the gym the other day, which, by the way, is in a gothic
cathedral. Yes, the gym is eight floors high, and looks like it is straight out
of Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.. Or Hogwarts (Yes! I always wanted to
go to Hogwarts!) Also, it is the largest gym in the world and boasts 12 acres
of indoor space. And if the architecture of this place isn’t Yale enough for
you, they also have several indoor crew tanks, a fencing floor, and a squash
room.
The castle-gym interior:
And a crew tank:
Anyway, I am already feeling right at home here. I have met
so many wonderful fellow grad students through the orientation events. It is
hilarious the type of conversations I over-hear, or find myself having. For example a
few new friends and I were waiting in line for free food at an event hosted by
a local bar when we over-heard somebody discussing how they preferred the
square plastic plates to the round ones because they had more surface area. First
of all, I love that like true grad students, this person wanted to optimize
their foraging strategy when free food was offered, and was doing so by
selecting the plate that could hold the most (honestly, free food at grad events
goes so fast, and naturally after hearing this selected the square plate over the round one when
I reached the front of the line), but mostly I love that I can let my inner
nerd loose. This is my place. I have a feeling that it will soon be much
tougher come the research pressures, teaching fellowships, and coursework, but this
is where I feel like I belong. Also today is especially good because I finally
got my internet turned on! Now I have access to online scientific journals! And
Netflix (let’s be real).
Fingers crossed that first day of classes goes well!
