I will come right out and say it: I am no thug. But my roommate last year, Yin Xie from the Bronx, is a thug. He likes Jay-Z, Bruce Lee, his Von Dutch hats and protein shakes. Yin says that one day he will be an investment banker. I think he will be the first investment banker ever to pull a knife out of his sock and stab a client when he blames him for his portfolio's poor performance (I say "he" because Yin knows how to treat a lady.). I will be honest, I am a little scared of Yin Xie from the Bronx, but we got along just fine for a year.
Like everyone else, I am sick of reading advice columns on these pages. However, we are now getting into the meat of our brief fall term, and as we do, I think you all should keep this anecdote in mind:
For, as well as we got along, there was one aspect of my relationship with Yin that I found troublesome.
I should first explain that we had a two-room double, in which I occupied the outside room. The trouble all lay in the door that separated our rooms. It was pretty much Yin's door. Not just in the sense that it lead into his room, but also in the sense that he controlled whether the door was open or not. We only had one heater, which was in my room, so when he was cold, he opened it. When he wanted to talk to Master P or someone else on the phone (I can only assume that Master P is the type of entrepreneurial thug with whom Yin Xie would associate), he closed the door. Sometimes, he left it open while he was eating. Other times, he closed it. I don't know why.
I guess I could have asked, but frankly, I was frightened. I was but a field mouse to his angry kitten. He had like four different kinds of Axe.
I asked a friend of mine in a similar rooming situation about this, and she said, "I see it kind of like my roommate and I got divorced, so we split the assets. Shared custody of the 'kids' (doors) is par for the course." This did not help me at all. I had the heater. Yin might have gotten cold if I closed it. No one understood my inner torment. No one. And since I could not confront Yin directly about this, I tended to do the next best thing: deal with whatever he decided.
We lived together for a whole year and I could never grasp that dynamic of our relationship. I had visions of grandeur, of having partial control over a door. But my dreams never became reality. The year went by so quickly. The whole significant break every 10 weeks thing may be what makes it all so fast. Or maybe it just went by quickly because I had so much fun. No, that can't be it. I hate it. I hate all of you.
What is it about this place that makes time go by so quickly? I am still not sure. When I would meet '05s as a freshman in random basement conversations, the most common response I got when I said that I am an '08 -- besides blank stares, laughter or beers thrown at me -- was "Enjoy it." Now that I am already starting my second year, I understand why. Ten weeks isn't anything. It comes, it goes, it is just a term. Three passed by and I never said anything about the door.
I was so sure I would bring it up so many times. I expected that his response would either be to bust out his brass knuckles and go Jay-Z meets Bruce Lee on me, or to laugh it off and then in the future find a smart way to make me very poor, very homeless, and very sad. Well, I thought, the joke would be on him, because I plan to be all of those things long before he becomes powerful enough to do them to me, and I would have partial control of an extra door. But it never happened.
If I could do it over again, I would and I encourage all of you to do the same. Not to have regrets or approach Yin (the world doesn't need any more violence), but instead to do the things here that you're putting off until later. Dartmouth is a timeless place, and accordingly, it is a place where it is easy to lose track of time. So, have the proverbial "talk" with your proverbial "roommate" about the proverbial "door" now instead of later. I know you probably think that I am not as qualified to talk about how fleeting time at Dartmouth is as a senior might be, but, I might ask, what senior has roomed with Yin Xie? I rest my case.
