Chapter Text
Office of Residential Life
Pleiades College
1221 Atlas Street
Orion, MA 02488
Jerusha Abbott
21 John Grier Ln
Grier, IN 46032
July 1, 2015
Dear Ms. Abbott,
Thank you for filling out your Residential Life housing survey. You have been assigned to Merope Hall East, Room 501. Based on the living preferences you indicated, your roommates will be Margaret Hale of Charleston, SC and Caroline Bingley of New York, NY. On the attached pages, you will find their contact information. We recommend that you reach out to your roommates over the summer to coordinate the purchasing or leasing of items for your dorm room, such as a microwave or mini-fridge. Further information concerning items that are and are not permitted in dormitories is also attached.
Residence halls will be open to first years starting at 9a.m. on August 10, 2015. Please report directly to your dorm to collect keys and receive your welcome packet for orientation.
Welcome to Pleiades College, Class of 2019!
Sincerely,
Martha Gardiner, Director of Residential Life
To: Charles Bingley <[email protected]>
From: Caroline Bingley <[email protected]>
Subject: Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh
Date: 07/06/2015
omg WORST news. i just got my roommate assignment from pleiades in the mail. THEY PUT ME IN A TRIPLE! can you believe it??? i asked mom if there was anything we could do about it, since we have family on the board of trustees and everything, but she doesn’t think so. Ever since they stopped putting the financial aid students in a separate dorm a few decades ago, apparently its really hard to negotiate for better rooms, even with connections like ours. SUCH bullshit.
I didnt even tell you the worst part yet. One of my roommates is from south carolina, which is bad enough, but the other girl is named JERUSHA and is from INDIANA. they didn’t even give an email address for her, probably because they don’t have internet in flyover states. This is going to be the worrrsstt. i’m so glad you and Darcy are at Mayflower so i can escape my terrible roommates and see you all the time. I’m going to be over there like, EVERY day hahahahahaha
Hey speaking of how is Darcy? hasn’t responded to my latest email. I’m sure you’re both super busy with your internships over there and time differences or whatever so no big I JUST MISS YOUUUUUU.
xoxo
Caro
July 10, 2015
Dear Jerusha,
Hi! I’m one of your new roommates, Margaret! My whole family (including me, obviously!) comes from Charleston, South Carolina. I spent the last 13 years of my life at Cooper Prep, a girls’ school here. All my friends thought I’d lost my mind, wanting to go to a women’s college after that, but I am just so excited about Pleiades. My mom went to Vassar, and she’s convinced me that women’s colleges are the best place to go to college (even though Vassar was already co-ed when she went there).
I’m a little nervous about moving up north, since I’ve spent my whole life in the south. I’m told Massachusetts is a little less… hospitable. I imagine you understand where I’m coming from, being from the midwest and all. But I’m sure it will be very interesting to meet people from all over the world and learn about their different backgrounds.
Do you have an e-mail address? Facebook? Some other kind of digital calling card? I’ve been messaging our other roommate, Caroline, and we’ve agreed that she’ll bring a fridge if I bring a microwave, so no need to worry about that. Anyway, if you do have an email, feel free to message me (and Caroline too!) at [email protected] or [email protected].
Can’t wait to meet you in a month!!!
Best,
Margaret Hale
To: <[email protected]>, <[email protected]>
From: Judy Abbott <[email protected]>
Subject: Hi!
Date: 07/15/2015
Hi Margaret and Caroline,
I’m Judy, your other roommate! Sorry for the mixup about the e-mail address; you can contact me here (obviously) until we get our school e-mails set up. I got your letter, Margaret. If you two are taking care of the fridge and the microwave, what should I contribute?
Looking forward to meeting you at Pleiades!
Judy
Sent from my iPhone.
To: Judy Abbott <[email protected]>
Cc: Margaret Hale <[email protected]>
From: Caroline Bingley <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Hi!
Date: 07/15/2015
OH THANK GOD I was afraid you didn’t have email or something, lol. I’m caroline. Mags and I have already been emailing and stuff for a few days. I think it’s suuuuper important we pick a universal color scheme for our room. How does everyone feel about magenta and orange? I have been scoping some really great bed linens at anthropologie in that scheme and i think it would be so cute. Maybe like green and yellow accents? Or would y’all rather go bold, like heavy on the reds with cerulean and muted mustard accents, kind of like gucci fall 2015 line? Lmk cause we should really start working on our dorm inspo pinterest board (look me up J I already added mags)
J: maybe you could look and see what plates and stuff you could find in those schemes, since mags and i are getting the fridge/microwave already. West elm had some really cute stuff the other day. Do you have west elm in indiana? Actually maybe i should jsut look cause theres more stuff here and you can always just venmo me later.
Xo
Caro
oh add me on snapchat/insta too im carobear96
To: Caroline Bingley <[email protected]>
Cc: Judy Abbott <[email protected]>
From: Margaret Hale <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Hi!
Date: 7/15/2015
Hi Caroline! Hi Judy! So glad we have your email address now :)
I actually already have my bedding – my godmother gave me some Vera Bradley bed linens for graduation, and they’re kind of a purple/teal/magenta pattern. I’m not sure how that works with your color scheme plans, Caroline, but I can add a picture of them to your dorm board on Pinterest?
Maybe we should plan a joint shopping trip together for when we get to school, and then we can plan to buy things like plates and decorations and whatever else we need together, after we’ve already seen what the space is like?
I wish we’d been able to start this conversation earlier! I’m going to be offline for most of the next three weeks – I’m leaving tomorrow for a medical mission trip with my church in Honduras, and I don’t know how much I’ll be able to be in contact. Awkward timing for our planning purposes (sorry!), but I’m super excited. I’m planning to be pre-med at Pleiades, and this will be a really good learning experience for me.
Anyway, I think Pinterest is a great way to brainstorm ideas, but let’s try to hold off on any major decisions until orientation. I’m sure decorating together will be a great bonding experience for us!
See you soon!
Margaret
To: Margaret Hale <[email protected]>
Cc: Caroline Bingley <[email protected]>
From: Judy Abbott <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Hi!
Date: 07/15/2015
Sounds good to me!
Sent from my iPhone.
To: Frederick Hale <[email protected]>
From: Margaret Hale <[email protected]>
Subject: Fwd: Re: Hi!
Date: 7/15/2015
Hey Frederico! I hate your stupid Spanish internship and miss you terribly. I’m off to Honduras tomorrow, but I thought you’d enjoy the following exchange between myself and my soon-to-be roommates. I still don’t know much about the mysterious Judy Abbott, but she cannot possibly be worse than Caroline, who continues to be awful. “cerulean and muted mustard accents,” I ask you. We haven’t even met yet, and I’m already having to play Room Referee and manage her ridiculous demands. Poor girl was probably spoiled something horrible growing up, bless her heart.
Adiós, mi hermano,
Margaret
PS How do I get her to stop calling me “Mags” please help situation dire.
To: Louisa Bingley <[email protected]>
From: Caroline Bingley <[email protected]>
Subject: Fwd: Re: Hi!
Date: 7/15/2015
SAVE ME LOU I’M LIVING WITH MORONS UGH VERA BRADLEY UGH TEAL AND PURPLE UGH UGH UGH PLS SEE BELOW.
July 16, 2015
Dear Mysterious Benefactor,
I am no expert on the protocol of scholarship disbursement and the strings attached to said disbursement, but this is certainly the most unorthodox scholarship scheme of which I have ever heard. I did not know how I was going to pay for college, being the parentless ragamuffin living at a group home that I am, so I just applied to every scholarship that I could find. When Mrs. Lippet – that’s the college counselor at my high school – informed me that I’d received a Pendleton Scholarship, I hardly even remembered that I’d applied, let alone the stipulations that came with it.
“The Pendleton Scholarship will cover your tuition, room, board, and living stipend during your four years at Pleiades,” said Mrs. Lippet, as my jaw hung somewhere in the vicinity of my navel. I’d assumed I was going to get through college the normal, American way – on top of a mountain of debt. “The Pendleton Foundation is unique in that, instead of requiring that its scholarship recipients maintain a certain grade point average or other scholastic benchmarks, all it asks of its scholars is that they send monthly letters documenting your progress in school.”
“Letters? Like, in the mail?” I continued to stare in disbelief.
“Yes, Miss Abbott. You will send them to a P.O. box in New York. They will be received and read by the anonymous donor who is funding your education, but you will receive no letters in return.”
“They don’t even care about my grades?”
Mrs. Lippet's lips turned down, as if she strongly disapproved of tracking academic progress through non-quantitative measures. “No, that is correct.”
“Awesome.”
At this, Mrs. Lippet proceeded to give me a 12 minute lecture (I timed it on the clock behind her) on the importance of maintaining a high grade point average in college, and I struggled to look attentive instead of rolling my eyes. Her primary point was that upon graduation, my future prospective employers would care deeply about my transcripts, an argument of which I’m rather suspicious. I think future employers will probably care a great deal more about what little work experience I manage to cobble together over the next four years than whether or not I get an A in a poetry class.
And it’s not that grades don’t matter to me, obviously. I mean, I got accepted to and chose to attend one of the most prestigious (and rigorous!) liberal arts colleges in the country. You have to be a certain kind of student to subscribe to that model. But it’s also nice not to be reduced to a grade point average, like that’s the only way to measure my value as a person over the next four years.
Mrs. Lippet is too much of a wet blanket to understand any of that though, so I just nodded along to her monologue.
That’s not really fair. I should be more appreciative of Mrs. Lippet. She DID help me fill out all those scholarship applications.
But she still has zero imagination, which is why I also couldn’t explain the other reason I am excited about this bizarre scholarship model. It’s so quaint and old-fashioned. I feel like the heroine in a 18th century epistolary novel, like Evelina. Hopefully no one gets their ear bitten off by a rogue monkey at the end of this story.
Now that I am actually writing to you, my Mysterious Benefactor Person, I am realizing how weird this actually is, writing to a specific yet faceless entity. I feel like I should address these differently, but I don’t know anything about you! Are you tall? Petite? Hairy? Bald? Old? VERY Old? I don’t even know if you are a man or a woman, come to think of it.
Perhaps I will just name you after this spider that is crawling along my window sill. It’s a Daddy Longlegs.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs.
Nevermind, that’s unbelievably creepy and paternalistic. Absolutely not.
I will have to think more on this nomenclature thing.
Anyway, the whole reason I am writing – even though I have not actually started school and so am not technically supposed to be sending these letters yet – is that I received something wonderful in the mail today. THANK YOU A MILLION TIMES for the computer (!!!) and iPhone (!!!!!!!) you have sent me via the Foundation in preparation for my upcoming school year. Words cannot convey how much this means to me. I have never owned anything this nice or useful in my life. We have a couple computers here at the group home, but there’s always such a crush to use them that I’ve never really bothered. Before I graduated, I could use the ones in my high school library for assignments, but now that it’s summer, I barely have the opportunity to go online.
Mrs. McBride, head of my group home, wants me to keep the laptop locked in her office for the rest of summer so as not to cause issues with the other kids here (fighting over the communal computers is bad enough as it is). But she let me keep the phone around so I can be in contact with my newly-assigned roommates!
I didn’t even bother listing an e-mail address on my housing form because my time on the internet is so limited now that it’s summer (that, and the only e-mail I could ever access at the high school was my school account, which is now defunct). But clearly this was a mistake. I got my housing assignment last week, and apparently you’re supposed to e-mail your roommates over the summer so your bed linens don’t clash or something. Then, I received a letter in the mail from one of my roommates, Margaret. The letter was very nice and polite, but it was also clear to me that I’d been missing some conversations. Apparently she and my other roommate, Caroline, have already split up the fridge/microwave purchasing duties in my digital absence. Now that I have a phone (and a gmail account), I am able to participate in the pre-rooming planning, but I’m not sure what I can contribute. Hot plates, rice cookers, and electric tea kettles are all apparently illegal. What else are you supposed to buy for a dorm?
Margaret seems very sweet and very southern. Caroline does not seem to be either of those things. I will try to reserve judgment on either until August, but I am confident this will be a very interesting year.
Until August,
Judy Abbott