While going to college can mean a lot of changes, the one that affected me the most was finding a new group of friends that I felt close to. I felt like I ‘knew’ a lot of people, but at the same time it was like I didn’t really know anyone at all. Luckily, that was something that definitely changed for me this year as a resident of the Asian American house.
For reasons I can’t really remember, I didn’t have much contact with the Asian American center during my first year. I wasn’t actually aware that people lived there until a friend heard about my sub-par housing lottery number and recommended that I look into specialty housing instead. Getting a tour of the house and briefly meeting some of the house members from that year helped me decide to apply, but it was definitely something that I didn’t anticipate doing until a few days before the application was due.
After I was accepted, we had a small house meeting with all of the new house members so that we could meet each other at least once before the fall. I remember that when I walked in, I only recognized a few of the six people, and didn’t really get to talk to them much. Flash-forward to late August, and this was making me feel incredibly nervous about my living circumstances, especially because a lot of the people I knew on campus were also going to be gone as they were studying abroad.
Halfway into the spring semester of this year, I can safely say that I didn’t have any reason to be anxious. I quickly discovered that I was living with a warm, kind, intelligent, and loving group of people. Over the past year, we’ve bonded over countless movie nights (where I did my best to expose everyone to Bollywood movies), having sundaes delivered to our house, spontaneous karaoke sessions involving a lot of Adele, and house dinners. And as residents of the Asian American house, we’ve also held many events related to the Asian American experience that have helped me learn so much, both through the events themselves and also through the informal conversations that inevitably follow.
I’m lucky enough to say that my housemates are more than just people that I live with - they’ve become my best friends here at Tufts, and I can’t imagine my experience here without them. I guess it just goes to show that the best things come when you least expect them to.