February

If I had to identify the month I felt was the most honest, I would say February. This might be a strange choice as February is never near the top of anyone’s favorite months in the state. It often sits close to the bottom. On one hand, I fully agree. And on the other hand, some of my fondest moments of college came out of February.

To begin, it’s accepted at Michigan that the winter semester (Jan through April) is worse than the fall semester (Aug through Dec). Largely this is due to weather, novelty, and football. The weather is far warmer during the fall semester. The yearly temperature crash only comes around Halloween, giving you two months of warm weather and beautiful wall colors. Football season happens in the fall and those are huge events for at least 11 Saturdays of the year. For my last year it was 14 and this year it was even 15! And it’s a new year! There are friends to catch up from the summer, and if you’re a freshman or an incoming grad student: It’s a wide world out there at Michigan. 

To set up some more context: February is not the last month of the year for winter in Michigan. Winter in Michigan goes at least through March and most likely half of April. So no you did not sit through February being excited for the end of Winter. You sit there wondering why it can’t even be pretty snow and is rather polluted and ice clumps from months of temperature spikes and car exhaust. A feeling that sits with me is the increasing salt of the floors. The university was fantastic at keeping the roads and sidewalks usable throughout the winter with astounding speed. But to accomplish that they used dramatic amounts of salt everywhere. And kids would walk over the salt, their boots would pick it up, and they’d dispense it throughout the hallways, classrooms, and labs of the university. After a few months, the floor would feel crunchy with every step you took and you could see your reflection in the salt crystals that coated every building. You would sit down in a lecture chair and instantly feel greasy. There is also absolutely no way to get rid of it without taking gallons of boiling water then dumping it over the entire floor and then letting it sit for a day. Which was not feasible until the summer (at what point the genuinely fantastic janitorial staff would do that to every single corridor in the University).

By February there are no major college events planned on Saturdays or truth be told any day. No spring or fall break to speak of, nor welcome week. Even rush will have concluded by that point. And you’ll be deep in your classes so no one was sitting around planning events out of sheer boredom. Everything you get out of February will be entirely determined by your ability to make the best of it. And there was something I loved about that.

No scrolling through social media expecting to see dozens of posts of people finding their forever friends or loving gameday while imposter syndrome ran rampant through my friends. Rather, it’s completely acceptable to just drink in peace at the bars. Or freeze outside them with your friends waiting to get in. I swear I learned more about my roommate freezing outside of Ricks than at any actual dinner we ever had. Any enjoyment you get out of your classes at this point is entirely from you finding the classes interesting. And sure some years this was the bane of my existence. But for some years I would still be excited to go to class even five, six, or seven weeks into the semester. And even when the exam metaphorically looked me in the eye, pulled out a gun, and shot me half a dozen times and point-blank range.

(Graduate fluid dynamics I’m looking at you. McVean I loved you as a professor but no other midterm I’ve ever taken ended with my classmate looking at me and going “Bar?”)

And in February, what I consider the second largest revelation of college for me happened on the bus. When I was in my Junior/senior year at Michigan, my third year on campus, I had a commute of roughly 5 minutes on foot to the bus, 30 minutes on the bus, and 3 minutes from the bus to my department’s building or the machine shop where Baja lived. Times this by two and you have a pretty sizable commute. And most of my time was spent with my head against the window either reading, or responding to emails and texts, but realistically just enjoying the quiet of the winter. In an even more absurd take than that I like the month of February, those long commutes throughout college were a highlight of college for me.

And on this particular bus ride, I was reading a novel where the main character makes it to a university where they can discover whatever they wish. To them, the idea that they could never make a dent in the archives of the university is not only shocking, but a tad depressing and even exciting. There is a magical version of what could be considered a machine shop, a chemistry lab, and historical artifacts. In all of them they are shocked by its ease of use and yet how in the short time they’re given, how little they see.

And to me, that was one of the moments where I changed my tune on the school.

I came to the school cynical about the entire process. To me, the entire process was to get a piece of paper saying I was employable. Sure I found enjoyment in my classes, made friends, and learned a lot. But to say my early years were rough would be an understatement. And throughout the first two years, I continuously saw university as a means to an end. An expectation of post-high School.

But on this random bus ride to North campus, with the lights turned off and a grey sky surrounded by the healthcare workers who had parked in the commuter lot, it all became fun. Because University is what you make of it. And I had access to opportunities I could’ve only dreamed about, even if I knew they existed. And I’d been able to access those opportunities and had been doing so for years. Even classes, which are never someone’s favorite part of college. I wished we had more time to dive into topics by the end of every semester. It was a joy to see your first two years of fundamentals pay off as you got to delve into the complicated topics and to my surprise somewhat understand what was happening. By this point, I had learned far more than I expected and the idea that “It was all about a piece of paper” was far gone. Part of an arrogant freshman’s opinion of higher education.

(Not to say I’m not arrogant now. We all know the answer to that).

Of course, it wasn’t smooth. I spend plenty of time discussing the darker sides of it all. I could write an article discussing what I think the counter to the month of February is: December. And that semester was the most brutal 15 weeks of my life. There were weeks where I averaged 4 hours of sleep and I had a weekly all-nighter. (Thursdays so I could make my Friday 9 am lab without having a commute and being able to get it done. Eat a pop tart out of the vending machine at 10 pm and call it dinner. Eat another at 6 am and call it breakfast).

And it wasn’t only academics that I was happy to have experienced. I once had homemade 4 loko at a friend’s house in February. I slept on the couch in the war room at Baja (The war room is another topic I’ve written about). I spent (too much) money at a bar named Charlie’s killing time. It was also in February that in the winter the bouncer let me jump the line and go in immediately because “He’s nice and spends a lot of money here”. 

(I had been working in Ann Arbor the previous summer and since Charlie’s is fundamentally an undergraduate bar I had gotten to know the staff better. But my friend Justin still took the time to point out to me that this “Was certainly a way to spend my post-baja free time”).

However, I realized that I had access to some of the world’s most advanced manufacturing equipment: and even was lucky enough to have friends encourage me to learn how to use it in my early years. I had classes with professors who truly gave a crap. Scientific articles, research equipment, too many interesting classes to take, and a graduate degree to hope I get into in the future.

While I think the academic revelation made up a lot of it later on I would realize how lucky I was in other aspects. I don’t give my friends enough credit when I write these. But looking back how lucky I was to have those who I wouldn’t have thought about if I was planning anything but rather just name a time so we could complain and get drunk together. That semester specifically I had friends who did everything they could to keep me alive. I had people bring me food and send me homework so I could sleep for sure. In one case, I was physically dragged to a party. One night I accidentally fell asleep sanding aluminum brake calipers. Aluminum dust for what it’s worth deprives your brain of oxygen. So when I left that room 16 hours later for senior design, I was massively high and lost it once I got to class.

I have no memory of those two hours but my classmates turned friends were howling as I apparently was unable to do any groupwork and just asked deeply personal questions to everyone. Not my greatest moment.

Fundamentally, February in Ann Arbor is drab, boring, and a reminder that winter has overstayed its welcome. There is no ability to hide from the question of “Why am I here?” when other months can have those decisions take a backseat to golden sunsets and parties every night. But to me, it was fundamentally the questions that month posed and what I did accented what made college amazing and why I don’t regret the decisions I made there.