College Stories
Web Exclusive
Fifty students and recent alumni responded to the Carolina Alumni Review‘s invitation to write stories about their time at Carolina. Almost half of them wrote about something that moved them during the life-changing college years. Five were featured in the May/June 2011 issue; all 23 writers are published here.
The Class That Wrote Me
by Lauren Bailey ’09
Most Carolina grads say the four years spent on the UNC campus were the best of their lives. And while I would agree, the major reason lays in the discovery of who I was and who I would become while taking a class “for fun.” …
On Being Nomadic
by Erin Becker ’11
“I don’t have a home.” This was my thought when I woke up in a room I was renting for a month this summer in Washington, D.C. It was a shabby brick brownstone between U Street and Dupont. I was there for a few weeks after getting back from studying abroad in England …
Turn it Blue, Paint Up Style
by Michael Betts ’11
I believe the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem; so, hi everyone, my name is Michael and I have an addiction. …
Kamla
by Sarah Bufkin, rising junior
People often ask me about India. “How was it?” they prod. “Did you just love the food?” …
Hard Work
by Megan Gassaway ’11
I would like to think I am capable of doing hard work. I have built houses with Habitat for Humanity and performed electrical and reconstruction work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But it was not until I went to Tanzania the summer between my junior and senior year of college that I learned the true meaning of “hard work.” …
Carolina Girls
by Brandon Gibbs ’10
Before I transferred to Chapel Hill I attended an all boys school, Morehouse College. At Morehouse you didn’t have “girl friends” only girlfriends. …
Then Now and Forever
by Brandon Gibbs ’10
When did you become a Tar Heel? Maybe you became one after opening that big packet that said congratulations! …
Surprise Assignment
by Allison Hastings ’11
One of the last assignments I expected to receive during college is watching children’s cartoons, let alone writing a paper about them. …
Solace in Stanzas
by Anasa Hicks ’11
My friend Miles died of alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare muscle cancer that tends to afflict young people, six days before he would have turned 19 and three days after I arrived at Carolina to begin my first year. …
Chilli Pepper Strawberries
by Kelsey Jost-Creegan, rising junior
The taste is strange in my mouth, surprising, arresting, delightful. A strawberry dipped in sugar and chili pepper. Who would have thought? …
Healing
by Emanuela Kucik, rising senior
The party tickets were $10 as long as you came in your costume. As a freshman, I was beyond excited for my first Halloween in college. I needed to get my ticket from a friend, so I pulled out my phone to call from the bus after class that Friday afternoon. Before I could dial, my phone rang. …
Big Fish (This Is Not A Tall Tale)
by Susannah Long ’11
“Do you want to have a weird meta-experience?” My roommate and I are sitting in Daniel Wallace’s kitchen. He was her professor last year and had hired her to house sit and watch the dogs while he and his wife were away. …
Fly on the Wall
by Katie Lubinsky ’11
The old saying goes that everybody in this world has a story … it just takes someone to listen. Through the journalism school at UNC, I learned the true meaning of that phrase and how unique everybody in the world truly is. …
A Home In The Crowd
by Julian March ’11
I had been waiting to come to Carolina my whole life, but the first time I felt apprehensive was right after my family drove away, leaving me standing outside Hinton James. All the students had come out on the lawn for a mixer and I stared at hundreds of unfamiliar faces. …
At Home in the Pink Building on Polk Place
by Elizabeth McCain, rising senior
It was pouring. The first time that I walked into the Campus Y, it was raining, and there were towels, trash bags and umbrellas in the doorway. Very dry upperclassmen with tri-folds outlining their committees laughed as I wrung out my new red dress. I felt at home. …
The Melodies of College
by Hogan Medlin ’11
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to stand beside the bells atop the Patterson/Morehead Bell Tower as they proudly ring the melodious tune of Hark the Sound. The bells’ vibrations echo across campus, piercing the air with the constant reminder of our love and loyalty to this place we call Carolina, this place we call home. There is a familiarity about the song that comforts us, stays with us, and ultimately shapes our identity – its music moves us. …
Dinner and a Show
by Emily Milks, rising junior
Making friends in class is always a challenge. For me, at least. I’m not a shy person around my friends, but I have to make the friends in order to open myself up. I have a formula for the beginning of each semester: I’m quiet the first few days because I like to think I’m “getting comfortable with the class,” but really I’m just being moody. …
That Feeling
by Chris Nickell, rising senior
I am convinced most people feel it. We just lack a common vocabulary to talk about it. Combining the few words we do have into one general catharsis-awe-pathos-wonder-love-God-humanity-connection feeling comes awkwardly close, but I find my experiences since coming to Carolina have given me a much richer — if less succinct — vocabulary. …
Where We Come From, What We Share
by Evan Rose ’11
In any given semester, there are some 50-odd boys playing for UNC’s club rugby team. Of these, maybe 10 will be international vets. You will know them both by their accents and foreign turns of phrase (the Aussies’s “stickybeak” is gossip; to the Brits, “chuff” means bad) and their eclectic collection of practice jerseys and socks. Sometimes, they wear pink. …
When Buildings Speak
by Greg Smith, rising senior
Architecture as an art form is something I’ve only recently developed an interest in. But our knowledge and awareness of buildings, conscious or unconscious, shapes our daily experiences, which in turn mold who we become over the years. I am who I am, not just because of the classes I’ve taken over the years or the people I’ve met with but also because of the shapes of the spaces we’ve inhabited together over the last four years. …
Intrepid
by Chantelle Soto ’11
I was sitting in an attorney’s office staring blindly at the two last names, “plaintiff” written next to one and “defendant” written next to another; a divorce. I was 21 years old, a mother to a 10-month-old child and a student at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. How could this be happening? …
The Unfortunate Consequences of a Limited Ability to Produce Witty or Appropriate Titles
by Akos Szekely ’11
Good day, morning, afternoon, or evening. My name is Akos Szekely. I’m not a writer, I’m a psychologist. I don’t mind dry writers, as long as the information they’re talking about is fascinating. …
Comma Exhale
by Leslie Taylor ’10
One day in my senior year at Carolina, I realized that I had given up normal punctuation and breathing. In high school, I used to scatter commas, periods and semi-colons across my pages like they were those little spherical sprinkles that come in primary colors to brighten up the cream cheese frosting on red velvet cake, and — I don’t want to brag or anything — I actually mastered breathing on exiting the womb. …
Throwing Out the Map
by Megan Winterhalter ’11
Ever since I was 6 years old, whenever my family would go on a trip, I would pull out the huge book of road maps my dad always packed and figure out where we were headed. My mom thought it was funny; funny that a 6-year-old was concerned with driving directions instead of being concerned about more important 6-year-old things like Barbie or I Spy. …