Eight in the morning. Potentially the earliest I’ve ever been awake on a Sunday morning. But there I was, having been awake for at least an hour already, pacing back and forth across the hallway from where my college’s room ballot was taking place.
Some context: last year, I was bottom of the ballot. The very last person to choose a room in college. All day, I watched as more and more rooms were taken by my peers, leaving me with undesirable options. All things considered, I still got a pretty good room. But whilst my friends managed to pick rooms that had sinks and window seats and were all near each other, I held onto the knowledge that I would be top of the ballot the following year. My third year accommodation, at least, would be perfect.
I received an email a few weeks ago telling me that my ballot place was #10. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining. Tenth on the ballot is lovely. But my college only offers four three-person flats. They’re great: right above Little Clarendon Street, removed enough from college that it feels like independence, close enough that it’s not much effort to go to hall if you can’t be bothered to cook. But there are only four, and there were nine people ahead of me in the ballot.
I’d wanted one of those flats for about a year.
Since receiving my ballot number, my friends and I made about a hundred contingency plans. What happens if there are two-person flats, but no three-person? What if there are no flats left? Should we consider the other block of flats, even though it’s so close to the church that you can barely hear yourself think for the sound of bells ringing on a Sunday morning? What if we didn’t get a flat, but all got rooms next to each other instead?
I felt a little annoyed that I wasn’t in the top three on the ballot – I had been last in the previous year’s ballot, after all. All I wanted was some security about where I’d be living.
So: eight in the morning. Frantically texting the two friends I was pulling into the flat with me, because they needed to be there when I went in. Praying that they hadn’t overslept. And as the waiting room filled up with only two other groups of three, I realised that we might actually get a flat. I expressed this idea with some trepidation in case I was wrong. It wasn’t until, at 8:18 on a beautiful Sunday morning, we walked into that room and said our building name and room numbers that we allowed ourselves to accept that we’d done it.
A few of our other friends were waiting outside for us, having secured a three-person flat of their own three slots ahead of us. We celebrated like we’d just won the lottery. Truly, I don’t think I ever have, or ever will, feel excitement quite like it. We were all going to live in adjacent flats! The dinner parties! The late-night talks! The constant, warm presence of your friends!
I’ve been riding that high all week. Birds have sung more sweetly. The sun has finally decided to show its face for the first time this year. One of my friends has already begun to order cooking appliances, worry-free about kitchen thieves. I thank God that I won’t have to walk into a grimy kitchen every morning and be hit with the scene of open packets of (sometimes rotting) meat lying on the countertops and weird black slime in the sinks.
But most importantly, I will be living with the people I love. That was the hardest part of being so low on the ballot. In first year, I’d walk out of my room and chat with a friend on their way to a lecture; this year, I walk out of my room into either emptiness or awkward silence. I think I hadn’t quite appreciated how useful it is to live within ten seconds of your friends.
I try to put some lesson, some message into my Love Letters. But I don’t have a lesson for you this week. I’m just fantastically, ecstatically elated. I am living in my own space, with people I love, with a kitchen and a living area we can decorate. I still have to get through Trinity without a mental breakdown or a rustication, but there’s now a light at the end of the tunnel.
So as I prepare myself to cook another meal in an unsanitary kitchen, trying not to cringe from the awkward silence of knowing someone in the kitchen, but not well enough for a ten-minute conversation, I feel that hope. Next year, when I go into the kitchen, I’ll see my college wife making flatbread. When I go for a cup of tea, I won’t have to avoid that one couple that are a little too comfortable with PDA in a kitchen shared by 60 people. When I make some toast, I won’t have to feel judgement from the guy I’ve never spoken to who’s cooking up a five-course meal. I won’t have to feel bad about loud conversations in my room because I’ll be living with people who will either already be a part of those conversations or who will join them. It will be bliss.