30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 10

Someone who came into your life unexpectedly and made an impact.

The thing about my best friends is that they've all come into my life in very surprising ways. But I'll save detailed descriptions of specific close friends for a later prompt about five people who mean a lot to me. Here, I will elaborate on a group of people who came into my life a little over a year ago.

I spent three years at SVSU prior to transferring to Wayne State at the beginning of the fall 2010 semester. While I was there, I majored in creative writing. The English Department is split into several areas of focus, literature or creative writing, and English education.

And so not surprisingly, there are all these groups/cliques based on one's individual major within the English Department. And even though SVSU's a small school and elective courses have us taking classes with people from all across the department, people tend to stick to their own area of focus socially. That's not an absolute, obviously, but you get the idea. And I'm sure the same type of thing happens at other schools, too.

For a whole bunch of reasons that I won't get into right now, three years into my degree program, I suddenly found myself torn between transferring or changing my major from creative writing to literature.

For purely social reasons, I sometimes wish I'd chosen the latter.

Because all these awesome literature majors popped into my life right before I left. I have no idea what they saw in me, honestly: the semester before I transferred, I was really standoffish. I knew I'd be leaving, and it was hard enough to say goodbye to all my old friends. I didn't even want to think about making new ones.

But somehow, I did. And I've kept in closer contact with them than I have with some of the people I've known since my freshman year at SVSU.

A year ago today, I was packing up my apartment and preparing to move back to my parents' house in Grosse Pointe. My friend Sara invited me to spend my last night in Saginaw celebrating her birthday with her. I gladly accepted, even though I didn't know many of the people she had invited to her party.

And that's how I got to know Toni. We'd had a couple of classes together, but prior to Sara's party, hadn't said more than a few words to each other. And one year later, we're really good friends. Last weekend, she came down to Detroit to spend the day with me at the DIA and Greektown. It was awesome. And later this summer, we'll be going to Lollapalooza together.

Baffling, given that I met her the day before I moved away. (Thanks, Facebook!)

The same goes for Angela. I met her in a class I took the semester before I transferred. And actually, I dropped that class about two weeks into the term. And then I loaned her my textbook. I figured we wouldn't interact with each other again after she returned it to me at the end of the semester.

But no. As a thank you gift for letting her borrow the book, she bought me (of all things) three tiny (and sparkly--yes, sparkly!) donuts from Starbucks. That was just weird and hilarious enough to give us something to come back to. So after I left, we got to talking online. And then I visited her in Bay City a few times. And she even came down to Grosse Pointe for my birthday this past December.

Furthermore, Stephanie, Jamie, and Carolyn--The three people who took me with them to Pittsburgh this past March--are all literature majors, too. While we were waiting for them to come and pick me up my mom said to me, "I don't remember you mentioning these friends of yours, Amelia. When did you meet them?"

My answer: "I've taken a few classes with Stephanie and Jamie. And I don't actually know Carolyn very well at all."

But now that I've spent three days with her in Pittsburgh, I do!

Weird how that works. It's taught me to be more open minded, really. I wish I'd met them sooner. But I'm glad I was given the chance to get to know them at all. I hope I don't fuck up my chances at opportunities like this in the future.