To whatever poor, tortured soul
occupies this apartment next,
You will earnestly swing open
the heavy front door, gleaming
with a streaky coat of clinical,
blueish-purpleish-greyish
paint,
and you will smell mold. You’ll
learn to grow accustomed to the
scent — no obscene amount of
Febreze or air freshener plugs will
ever succeed in masking it — but it
will make you flinch upon entry.
Unfortunately, this will be only the
beginning of your torrid love affair
with Apartment #1.
You’ll walk into the bathroom
and look up at the ceiling, only to
find it sloping downwards to greet
you, slick with an impenetrable
coat of orange stains and stray
hairs embedded into the paint.
You’ll wonder if you had come to
the wrong address; this is not the
shiny, pristine apartment you were
advertised through the realtor’s
photos. It’s on you, after all, for
not questioning why they weren’t
willing to let you tour any units
prior to your arrival.
Do not expect the fridge to
always work. Or any of the lights,
for that matter. Your apartment
is prone to power outages, water
shut-offs and a plethora of other
issues that are just enough to
begin eroding your already wire-
thin nerves. Your “sent” mailbox
will become cluttered with emails
filing for countless work orders so
that you can shower or wash your
laundry or repair the flooding
toilet that had you and your
roommate ankle-deep in dirty
water for an entire evening.
Apartment #1 is, for all intents
and purposes, a hellscape. Your
roommate will joke that it isn’t
meant to sustain human life: it’s the
seventh circle of hell, or a cosmic
joke or some bizarre purgatory
you’ve been condemned to as
penance for 20 years of bad karma
— it must be. No other explanation
seems to make sense. But if your
experience is anything like mine,
Apartment #1 is not just a subpar
place for you to reside during your
sophomore year. It will prove to be
so much more than that.
—
It might be the place where you
have your heart shattered into a
million pieces.
You’ll get the call on an
unassuming
August
morning,
rousing you from a deep sleep. (If
you’re like me, you’re curled up on a
mattress pad sans mattress, resting
atop a half-built bed frame). You’ll
know what the call is about before
you answer, and you will never
hate being right more than you
do when you hang up the phone
a brief twenty seconds later. You
come away from the call with no
flowery summation, no eloquence
or profundity or understanding,
nothing at all except the truth:
your world is heavy and someone
you love has just died.
Your family will leave the
country the next day for the
funeral, and they will be gone for
months afterward.
Your room will be cold for
weeks.
—
You will lie in your bed, finally
sporting a mattress, one October
night. Your body will be tugged in
and out of sleep, eyes heavy from
the day’s exhaustion and body
heavier from the weight of your
bones and the world and whatever
else. They’ll flutter open and peer
up at the window situated over
your head, and behind the slits of
your shutter blinds, you’ll be met
with another pair of eyes.
Pressed against the glass stands a
man, and you’ll realize he has been
watching you sleep. You will not
know how long he had been there,
or why. But you will never forget
the shape of his boots, with tattered
laces and fresh dirt clinging to the
worn leather, the eerie stillness of
his stature, the dark shadows cast
over his face and the unplaceable
coldness behind his unblinking eyes.
10 — Graduation Edition 2023
Ode to Apartment #1
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
The greatest love story
YASMINE SLIMANI
MiC Columnist
I’ve been thinking a lot lately
on what constitutes a friend.
The qualifiers and the levels
all associated with it. What
distinguishes someone as a true
friend versus someone you spend
time with? An issue I had in the
past (and still suffer from) is failure
to define, creating the boundaries
between different categories of
friendship. I consider myself close
with a lot of people, but am I
actually? How many can I consider
a true friend, a partner, a protector
of my own interests who hold me in
the same regard as I hold them?
My friend Eliya sent me a
TikTok the other day that featured
a quote about female friendship —
that it is a ferocious, ugly, messy,
emotional creature we are never
taught to train. My first reaction
was to laugh, because it’s never
that deep. Friendships are simple.
Easy. It’s romantic love that’s the
complicated kind. But the quote
has rattled in my head as I’ve been
studying abroad, separate from the
people I call home.
Sometimes I forget where my
best friends begin and where I end.
Their friends are my friends. My
belongings are their belongings.
Their house is my house. The lines
are blurry to nonexistent at times.
No topic is out of bounds. We
consume each other’s emotions.
We ruminate over situations,
strategizing and theorizing in our
imaginary situation rooms. We tell
each other our secrets. Our shame.
Our burdens. Our pain. Do you
remember last winter when I held
you in my arms after you told that
boy you loved him? I do. The light
reflecting off your tears, which I
had never seen from you before.
The tremble in your voice as you
described his rejection. But it’s not
just the difficult parts that we share.
We also cheer for each other. Praise
one another for putting ourselves
out there. Uplift one another when
we feel we might have fallen short.
And although you were shaking, I
could not stop thinking how strong
you are — for taking that risk, for
being vulnerable. I am proud of
you; I know you’re proud of me too.
I could hear it in your voice months
later, in the summer, miles away
from one another as you cheered
me on for going on my first New
York City date. We give and give
and take and take and take.
I am a hopeless romantic.
From the media I consume to the
stories I write about, romantic
love has always been paramount.
It’s not like it’s hard to obsess over
it. Media is saturated with love
stories. Countless books, podcasts,
movies, TV serieses and more are
all dedicated to the pursuit of love
and keeping it. My favorite TV
show used to be “Sex and the City.”
KATHERINA ANDRADE
OZAETTA
2022 MiC Assistant Editor
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE MICHIGAN DINING GRADUATES!
WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU AND THANKFUL FOR YOUR TIME
AND DEDICATION TO MICHIGAN DINING DURING
YOUR TIME AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN!
GOOD LUCK AND CONGRATULATIONS!
class of
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Design by Tamara Turner
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Michigan merch and the mystique of “going away”
I,
like
many
University
of
Michigan students, have amassed
a collection of Michigan merch.
T-shirts, hoodies, flannel pajama
pants, beanies: you name it, I have
it. Despite this, I rarely wear my
merch outside of my dorm. I won’t
say that I never do — I am guilty of
occasionally repping on game days,
or if I wake up 15 minutes before my
class on North Campus and need
something to wear — but my merch
is mostly relegated to lounge wear
and laundry days. That is, with one
notable exception: weekends when I
travel home.
I am originally from La Porte,
Indiana, an average mid-sized
Midwestern
city
desperately
wanting to be a part of “Da
Region“. If you’ve spent any time
in the Midwest, you could probably
guess most of the following info: its
name is borrowed from butchered
French, the population is majority
Republican and white and the
primary life goal of every resident
aged 25 or younger is to GTFO. La
Porte has plenty of quirks too, such as
being the hometown of MuggleNet’s
creator, being the (assumed) final
resting place of serial killer Belle
Gunness and having a literal meat
slicer as a high-school mascot. With
that said, it has treated me well for
the most part. I graduated from its
high school with a trove of joyful
memories and experiences crafted
by dedicated educators, I built
lasting relationships with friends
and mentors and I still enjoy the
vibrant music and art culture found
all across the county. My father
was born and raised there, and
my mother moved to the city from
nearby Westville in her 20s; they’ve
raised two children in their first
home there, through various trials
and tribulations not unlike those of
my other middle-class peers.
College completion is below
the national average in La Porte
(according to census data, La
Porte is roughly 8-14% behind
in the “Bachelor’s degree” and
“Bachelor’s
degree
or
higher”
categories for the 25 years old or
older
demographic),
mostly
as
a result of its inaccessibility. La
Porte sits between three towns with
universities (Valparaiso, Westville
and South Bend), yet all are a
commute away and not always easy
to get to year-round (lake effect
snow, Midwest roads, etc.). Thus,
young people either default to one of
the commuters, avoid college or — if
you have the privilege and support
to do so — “Go Away”. Despite
being described as an academically
“high achieving” cohort, my peer
groups have been fairly split on
going to college, and only a few
chose Going Away. “Going Away”
usually means picking a state
school like Ball State, Indiana
State or IU (the state has provided
some
demographic
information,
being provided on page 3) — I can
count on one hand the friends
who went out of state, including
myself. The opportunity to transfer
to Michigan was a big deal to my
family; dinner conversations were
filled with coworkers’ and friends’
responses to the news for months.
Even now, neighbors and old friends
still celebrate my departure from
my hometown. Despite seeking
a niche arts degree (as opposed
to, say, receiving a prestigious
engineering
degree),
attending
Michigan elevates me to the level
of my hometown’s perception of the
University – regardless of why they
have that perception.
CEDRIC MCCOY
MiC Columnist
Read more at MichiganDaily.com