Suzy

A few years ago, on my birthday, I returned from class to find a note on my door that said, "Happy Birthday Jon Wong." It was signed, "your front-door neighbor." It took me a few seconds to figure out that Suzy had derived "front-door neighbor" from "next-door neighbor" to mean "neighbor from across the hall." It was one of those moments that always makes me chuckle every time I think about Suzy.

If I were to think of the definitive example of how living in residence brings people together, I would think of the year I spent living across the hall from Suzy. Under any other circumstance, Suzy and I probably would probably never have spoken to each other because we are simply such different people who lead such different lives. She was in a different program than I was; she's interested in different things; the people she hangs out with are not the kind of people I hang out with (and vice versa); our personalities don't mesh... you get the picture.

However, one of craziest things about residence is that it sometimes throws people together who might never otherwise have spoken to one another. By some strange coincidence, I ended up living across the hall from someone who had no idea what university would be like and the simple fact that I did meant that we suddenly had something to bond over. Suzy liked talking about "the-first-year-experience," as I called it, and I was interested in listening.

Suzy's friendly and sociable. She makes the effort to talk to people and she isn't someone who will pretend not to notice you if the two of you cross paths. She always seemed happy to see me and this is not something to take lightly considering how often we saw one another over the course of an 8-month period. This was true even when she had not social obligation to do so. I remember returning to residence a number of times and... well, it's not like I was trying to sneak into my room without her seeing me... but it hadn't crossed my mind to chat. Nonetheless, as soon as she heard my lock click, Suzy would always call out and say hi. And that's nice, you know?

Suzy will also take the initiative to point out some of your nice traits if she notices them. I remember helping someone with an essay once and left my door open during the process. After I finished going over said essay and sent this girl on her merry way, I had just turned to my computer when I heard Suzy yell across the hall, "You're gonna be a great teacher, Jon!"

Suzy's intense and full of the life she tries to enjoy. That's one thing I'll always remember about her - her intensity. She was a competitive gymnast before she started university so I guess that's where some of it comes from. Even though I still think that she and I might not have bonded had we met elsewhere, I guess the biggest point here is that we didn't. We met in a situation that did allow us to bond and I got a chance to know someone whose wonderful traits might not have jumped out at me had our situation differed as slightly as one of us living in a different section of the floor.