Sims University is not the only place of its kind, but it is the largest and most prestigious. The campus sprawls out, as big as a town. The parking lots alone seem as vast as oceans, and the old New England architecture feels oppressive to Lydia, even creepy.
Classroom and administration buildings dominate the landscape, surrounded by strips of smaller, drab buildings packed with book stores, coffee shops, bars, and restaurants that are there one day and dead the next.
Then there's the endless parade of sorority and fraternity houses.
And venturing off the beaten path, there are those abandoned, decaying things... the hints at what once was... those surreal places that signal most sims to turn back, before they get lost.
Lydia, Solana and Arne are living in this dormitory.
Some of the communal areas are a bit dark and in serious need of a remodel, but overall it's a nice place. Only the best for Sims-U students.
There's a little room with treadmills, ensuring that none of our protagonists will bother visiting any of the impressive gyms around campus.
The kitchen is far more spacious than the one back home, and it has two full size fridges.
There's plenty of communal space, but most students are too busy with studies and activities to take a breather and hang out in them. Some places on campus may be a constant party, but Henry Hall feels more like a library, hushed and judgmental.
As a couple, Solana and Arne are able to get a room to themselves. There's a certain level of excitement in that.
"Should we redecorate?" Solana asks.
"If you want. I don't think we'll do much more than sleep here, though..."
"We might do a little more than sleep here," Solana quips, as she pats the bedspread, but she gets no response. Maybe she was too subtle.
Lydia has to share with a roommate. Ann Conners greets her with politeness, but thorough disinterest. "You won't see much of me," she promises. "I got a boyfriend at Urele-Oresha-Cham."
That would be one of the frat houses.
"Well, okay," Lydia says, her smile weak. She's torn between disappointment that she and her roommate will not be immediate besties, and relief at the possibility of having a mostly private room.
Lydia follows Solana and Arne to the university's meet & greet for the new term, but is promptly abandoned when they want to check out the science labs they will soon have access to.
After a few attempts to strike up conversations with other students end in disaster, Lydia ends up in the cafeteria at an odd hour, eating dinner alone.
Sometimes it was conflicting traits. Other times there were just too many people around vying for attention, and her little voice was never going to be heard among the chorus of other sims more funny, outgoing and likeable than she.
That night, the dorm is burglarized.
Arne checks on some odd noises only to find the grinning bandit has just shoved an entire pool table into her bag of holding.
He locks himself in his room and calls the police, but of course the crook makes a clean getaway before said police arrive. This gives everyone in a dorm a negative moodlet.... one they have not seen the last of, because this dorm is robbed twice more before the week is over.
Classes start early the next morning and last long into the afternoon, with short breaks in between that barely give Lydia enough time to run from one building to the next.
The work is grueling. There are so many papers to write... and worse, Lydia begins to question what kind of job she can get with this degree, and whether it would be suitable for her after all.
What am I doing? she thinks to herself. I can't do any of this stuff. I don't belong here.
Lydia only wanted to go to university because Solana went. Lydia has been pulling this shit her whole life. "Copycat", Laurel would call her, when they were kids. Even as a toddler, she only wanted to play with the toys her sisters were playing with.
She did not have the body to follow Laurel into professional sports, so she followed Solana into academia.
Her professors don't seem to like her, her classmates ignore her, the doubt and indecision is mounting, yet Lydia persists, and studies hard, because if there's one thing her life experiences have prepared her for, it is being a student.
She is not the best, and she is too easily distracted by her insecurities, but she is trying.
Arne and Solana, on the other hand, are having a blast. They are well-liked by their professors and in love with all the new tech they have access to. Sim-U students who manage to obtain degrees in the sciences are expected to go on to work in the bleeding edge of their fields.
When they hit the books, they enjoy it. It doesn't feel like a grind.
Lydia visits them in the lab sometimes, but just to goof around, because she can't comprehend what they are working on.
Eventually Lydia gets lonely enough to start showing up at kegger parties.
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Etc.: "There's no way I'm playing through stupid-ass university." - me, Tuesday, July 8, 2014
So much can change in six years!
So much can change in six months...
