There are seven other people who lived this nightmare with me, and this goes out to all of them, wherever they may be. Girls of Suite C, this one's for you.
 |
| a real Pepperdine dorm...oooooooh |
College is stressful enough that you basically, as a freshman, run from activity to activity, like a deer in headlights, hoping to hell that soon you will know what you're doing and where you're going. You have scheduling, transportation, orientation, you name it. And then, the joys of communal dorm living set in.
I think we were all really excited to be away at school, proud that we had made it in, and basically grateful to be there. I don't think any of us were prepared to share a bathroom with seven other girls, let alone a room (something I had never done until this point) as well as a building, full of bitches just like you. We had a really sweet resident advisor (RA), Learsi, and she basically let us do whatever we wanted, if she didn't have to see it happening. Our assistant RA, was a total bitch. I don't remember her name, but that's because I stayed the hell away from her.
At Pepperdine, they do a little torturous activity known as "Freshman Orientation", where they make you come in the middle of the summer to "get ahead" of everyone else, get acclimated to the campus, and in reality: size everyone up for the coming year. Here's where I saw my first small dog in a Kate Spade purse, hell, it's where I saw my first Kate Spade purse, period. I saw kids with cars I had only seen my local plastic surgeon drive.
It was at this orientation that I met my future roommate, who we will call Sandra. Sandra seemed really great at first, she seemed kind and funny. She was very sarcastic and dry, and her parents (yes, you brought your family along with you to this nightmare) were really cool. She was from Texas, she was into a lot of cool music, she had a car and she also had the worst lingering body odor I have ever smelled.
I prayed it was the long drive, or just the stress of the situation, that made her smell that way. I tried to ignore it, and of course I forgot it as soon as our weekend was over, and I was back home, buying XL twin sheets and dreaming about all the girls I saw whom I knew I would be both alienated and bullied by.
When school began, Sandra beat me to our room in Suite C, and picked what I would have called the "better side of the room" but I didn't care. What I was most alarmed by was the odor. Our room smelled like the inside of an ass. She was unpacking, I realized, and it was her clothes. They all stunk, just like her. She later informed me she "didn't sweat" and therefore, must not need deodorant. I can count on two hands the amount of times she showered.
This nightmare soon breached my room and began to effect our other suite-mates. My room was nicknamed the "BO-den" as in, the Body Odor den. I became very close with one girl, so when we had one of the ladies leave, due to a slapping incident between a Nigerian princess and a Kappa princess (another awesome post for another time), we had a bed "open up" so-to-speak. We shuffled orders, and I was out of that stinky hell.
When she was gone, which she was for EXTENDED periods of time, I would go into our room (since I still had my key) and we would have the time of our lives. We went through her "laundry", which was more like a science experiment...we even photographed some key items we wanted to be able to show other friends who didn't live with us, and subsequently did not believe someone could be so gross.
We would also find pictures she had left in her desk drawers, of her and her boyfriend, whom we lovingly referred to as Rumplestiltskin. One of them was rather compromising, so it was obviously passed around and was everyone's favorite object to pull out after a night of drinking.
Eventually, she moved out, angry we had "gone through her stuff" and someone had taken her copy of
Steel Magnolias. We basically laughed her right out of the dorm, her and her little Stiltskin, got an apartment somewhere where they could both wallow in their own filth.
The crazy thing was, she would lie about everything. We would catch her in lies about being in a band, traveling to different places, having "insane" parties at her house, and so on. If she said she knew someone or had did something, we would all roll our eyes. She was ultimately the person who was the most full of shit I have ever met in my whole life. She left school for a few years, and several years later, a friend drew my attention to something unbelievable.
Apparently Sandra returned to Pepperdine and claimed she had ovarian cancer. I think that both the Church and the school raised about $10,000 for her in total. She never offered any proof of the illness, and it was rumored that her parents had "no comment" on the subject. Knowing Pepperdine, I expect she received private donations as well. I heard she bought a new car with all the money. Let's hope she got an air freshener for it too.
