As a student, the promise of a senior year spent driving your car to class, taking the courses you want while leading the clubs and teams you love, going to the Seagrape or NAUT and coming home to a beach in your backyard is quintessentially Fairfield. More often than not, though, it seems like this comes at the expense of the three years that come before it.
With just a few weeks left in the semester and graduation right around the corner, these glaring questions keep popping up in the back of my mind. Was it really worth the wait? Did senior year make up for the last three I spent living in converted triples with obnoxious neighbors packed in overcrowded dorms? Was it worth taking classes I didn’t like and doing the same thing in the same places every weekend? Was it really the light at the end of the tunnel?
As the spring semester comes to an end, Fairfields seniors begin thinking more and more about the reality of life outside the 200 acres of stag country that have been their home for the last four years. For many, it means an endless stream of applications and interviews, apartment hunting in cities they’ve never known, plans to reconnect with roommates when their beachfront leases end way too soon, and a reflection on the time their parents have said will be the best years of their lives.
I can still remember going on my tour at Fairfield in the spring of 2021 and dreaming about life on the beach with all my friends just a short drive from home and a shorter train ride to New York City. When I arrived, I chalked up the sweltering fourth floor of an overflowing Jogues Hall—with its missing ceiling tiles, clunking elevators, and dryers that somehow left laundry wetter than when it had gone in—to an unavoidable part of the college experience.
Sophomore year was disappointingly similar. While I had the luxury of my own space in the sophomore village, I watched as my friends spent another year sharing communal bathrooms between treks to class from McCormick and Gonzaga Hall. We were still fighting to get into any of the courses we wanted and the Magis Core was looking more and more daunting every day. At least next year I would be living in a townhouse—or so I thought.
Seven roommates in a Dolan Hall ‘apartment’ did not fit the bill of what I had assumed was the promise of a townhouse in my junior year. Whether I had misheard my tour guide or was blinded by the thought of having my own house on campus, discovering my placement in the housing lottery was disheartening to say the least. Being abroad the following spring and living a college life outside of Fairfield, I saw a side of the college experience that could not have been more different than the one I had become accustomed to.
On paper, four years at Fairfield seems to best define itself as enjoyment deferred. Enrolling as a first-year student means paying your dues in overcrowded dorms while scraping the bottom of the barrel during registration with the promise that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, just a short drive down Reef Road. Spending your nights in the same lounges and townhouse basements knowing that sooner or later you’ll be showing off your NAUT wristbands and celebrating your seniority at every bar and party you attend.
As a senior finally living on the beach, spending nights at the Seagrape and doing everything I’ve been waiting four years to do, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t fun. As the year’s gone on, though, I’ve found myself more and more disillusioned by the appeal of all the things I’d been awaiting so desperately. Living in the Fairfield suburbs means quieting down because your neighbors’ kids have school tomorrow morning. It means taking shorter showers and remembering to pay your gas bill on time because burst pipes in January are a problem and pasta doesn’t taste as good when you make it in the microwave. Going to the Seagrape means waiting for an hour in freezing winter rain when your friends took too long to walk out the door and freezing your credit card the morning after someone swipes it off your tab to drink for free.
This is not to say that I haven’t loved Fairfield, though. As the winter turns to spring and the seconds seem to tick by faster every day, the thought of leaving gets harder to imagine. When the rain stops and the sun has a moment to break through the clouds while I sit in my backyard, overlooking the Long Island Sound, there is no place in the world I’d rather be. The thought of playing my last club soccer game or the final broadcast of the radio show I’ve hosted since freshman year hits me in some deep, melancholic part of my heart that I didn’t know existed until my cap and gown came in the mail two weeks ago. Pretty soon, I’ll be giving my last campus tour and I don’t know how to get through it without a couple tears breaking loose.
While the promise of beach living and senior nightlife have driven me to hold out hope through disappointing conditions during my time on campus, I can honestly say that they are not all they’ve been hyped up to be. In its place, community, faculty, and the opportunities Fairfield has given me have made my time here invaluable. Through housing losses and registration woes I have met friends and mentors who have defined where I am today. In as many ways as I have found faults in the administration and its operation, I have found sources of love, acceptance, and hope in places I would’ve never imagined. This place has shaped me and everyone I know into who we are today and I can’t imagine four years anywhere else.
I can confidently say it has all been worth the wait.