When I was initially accepted by Beloit College, I remember running outside my sunny southern California home to show my parents my laptop with tears streaming down my face and hiccuping some slurred sludge along the lines of,”I didn’t think I’d actually go to Wisconsin for college!” It was exhilarating, it was life changing. I got so caught up in waiting for something, anything, to indicate where I might be going to college that I didn’t consider the inevitable. I got in, now what?
My first thought through the blur that is submitting a three hundred dollar deposit was, "I’m moving cross country and I need friend security ASAP.” According to the people at Beloit College itself, around a whopping ten percent of the population hails from California. That number seemed rather laughable considering that initially, the majority of friends/family/school mates/administration had taken to pronouncing Beloit as Elliot with a B. Cringe with me now. Thankfully, I found out about this nifty group on Facebook of all places that were composed of admitted students. It didn’t seem like much at first, until this girl named Komal created an actual group chat with students. In hindsight, it wasn’t that revolutionary of an idea. In the moment, however, it became this loud cacophony in my mind of “real-time interaction” with future classmates. Future best friends, future dorm mates, just about every future person I could meet could exist within this chat.
Right after being added, there was this incessant barrage of greetings and locations and favorite colors. It seemed like a new person was added every five minutes, the population in the cyber landscape tripled overnight. First tentative messages were exchanged, flighty fidgety people saying things like, “Hey, I like that show too!” Personalities began to emerge behind the profile pictures, full-fledged people behind every keystroke and emoji. It became a lot like the Greek myth of the hydra, for one chat that seemed to go dark, suddenly specific interest chats would spring up. There was the main group chat, with around seventy kids. Then there were the secret two to three people chats comprised of kids that just genuinely clicked. There were group chats for every open house dates, one for these kids that were determined to start a band at Beloit, and ultimately even one designated as the “Californian Support Group”.
You know that song from Hercules, Zero to Hero? That became my life. I found a group of amazing people, varied and wide enough that when I flew out from LAX to Chicago for the visit days, I had a bus buddy. We scheduled picture meet ups during the April Open House, walked around campus, and ultimately were there for each through the process that is college admissions. There were nights where time zones seemed impossible, the sun in the sky be damned, I could/can/will talk to my friend from India until there is no ocean between us. Inside jokes came from physical strangers, bodies that have never inhabited the same space yet knew all the habits.
Ultimately, I am forever thankful for that Facebook group, for the idea to start a chat, and for myself, for having the courage to send that dreaded introductory message.