"Music is the vernacular of the human soul."

Recently I've found a new affinity for some of my old CDs. Specifically John Mayer's Room for Squares. I went through my piles of CDs the other day and pulled it out. It takes me right back to Ohio University.

If I put on the CD and close my eyes, it's like I'm right back there. Fourth Floor Washington Hall on East Green Freshman Year, craming into a room the size of half a hallway, walking up Jeff Hill to my 9 am Poly Sci 101 class that first fall quarter, getting lunch and dinner with Lindsay and Alyson at Shively. Broomball in the winter, hockey games on Friday nights, finding someone with a car and driving to Nelsonville to see a movie....and much, much more.

When I went down for orientation before the school year started the summer of 2002, it was the only CD I had in the car. I listened to it on repeat the entire 4 hour drive between Athens and Mentor. Partly because I enjoyed it and partly because the radio doesn't offer much for about three hours of that drive up 77. I think I listened to the CD much of that year too. I'm surprised it still plays. It has a few scratches in it and a couple of the songs skip, but it doesn't bother me.

I feel lucky I have such fond feelings of college. I didn't even want to go to OU. I wanted to go to New York University. I thought that was the center of it all and it's where I wanted to be. I didn't get in, and even if I did, it was too expensive. I barely made it into Scripps actually. OU was simple, but getting into the journalism school was a much different story. Though my grades and class rank were good enough, I wasn't the best at standardized tests. My SAT score was WAY to low and my ACT was a point or two off the requirement. I remember not getting in right away. I would check online daily to see my status. I remember finding out on what I think was a Friday night. I know I was working at the News-Herald taking sports scores. I remember exactly where I was sitting. I remember feeling such a relief.

Listening to John Mayer brings that all back like it happened ten minutes ago. Memories I forget any other time come rushing through whenever I put on the CD. It's like they're all kept inside that music.

I look at my college career in two parts. The first two years and the last year and a half, plus a quarter. Just like John Mayer brings back Freshman year, David Gray makes me think of that second half. The summer after sophmore year until I graduated in November 2005. Makes me think of Junior year, that wonderful summer before, and that fall, sitting on Brett's roof listening to White Ladder on repeat on a Friday night. Laughing at all the drunk people trying to cut across the lawn, but running into a three foot drop at the very end. Among the others...

Of course music marks the chapters for a lot of my life, but somehow this music is much more significant. I think a lot of it has to do with how much I credit that time at OU for a large layer in the base of who I am now. Not only the classes and experiences, but the people. I made some of the most wonderful friends there. Proof of that is many of them I am still in touch with on a regular basis almost three years later. Even though we are spread out across the country, from coast to coast, many of us still have as much in common now as we ever did. I've been lucky to see some of them get married, visit others in their new lives and even work alongside some on stories.

It's those connections that definitely help get me through when I'm starting over, moving to a new city like Lexington. It's the music that helps too, because if I ever feel lonely, I can put on one of those CDs and remember how scary that beginning was, all the bumps and bruises I took and how wonderful it all turned out.