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

