Berkshire State University

Berkshire State University is the college Brendan chooses after being admitted to Fordham and Connecticut College, and the setting for his first steps into life away from home. Its appeal is practical as well as social: it is more affordable than his other options, but Brendan’s stated chief reason is that BSU is a party school and he likes to party. The campus first appears as a threshold between the familiar world he leaves behind and the freedom he has anticipated, a threshold that proves exciting for him but painful for Eve.

Choice and Expectations

Brendan has done well enough in school to win admission to several colleges, yet his decision to attend Berkshire State University reflects neither academic prestige nor a carefully narrated vocational ambition. He presents the choice cheerfully as a preference for a party school. That explanation fits the easygoing identity he shows the world: a popular, athletic young man who appears comfortable with fun and sociability. The university’s reputation thus meets an existing self-image, while its affordability gives the choice a concrete family consideration.

The apparent confidence is not the whole story. Brendan has lived through his parents’ divorce, and Eve still sees the boy who once slept with a picture of Ted beneath his pillow and spoke to it in the night. On the journey to college, the new surroundings and unfamiliar faces unsettle Brendan even as he recognizes the freedom he had wanted. The university is therefore not simply a destination he has chosen; arriving there makes the distance from his old life immediate.

Move-In and the Residential Campus

The family’s approach to campus is slowed by a traffic jam made up of incoming students and their relatives. Near the Longfellow Residential Area, upperclassmen in matching red T-shirts greet arrivals with handmade signs, including Welcome Home! and First Years Rock! Their welcome appears organized, even paid for, but its energy is infectious enough that Eve grins and waves. Brendan, still grumpy from a nap, questions her friendliness. The small exchange catches their differing positions: she reaches toward the new community, while he is not ready to share the moment with her.

Brendan is assigned to Einstein Hall, one of the high-rise dormitories in the Longfellow area. Eve has heard alarming stories about the local party culture, but on move-in day the scene seems reassuringly orderly. A crew of student movers empties the van quickly, transferring Brendan’s belongings into a large orange wheeled bin. A crew leader shuts the hatch and addresses Eve as his mother before taking Brendan and his things upstairs. The efficient handover makes departure a practical process: the possessions are carried into the building, and Eve’s role in settling him in is already nearing its end.

After she has finished helping in the room, Eve has little left to do but board the elevator and wave as the doors close. The students around her talk excitedly among themselves and do not respond to her awkward smile. Their indifference is not presented as hostility; it is the ordinary absorption of people beginning their own college lives. To Eve, however, the elevator’s descent sharpens the sense that she is old and excluded, watching a party to which she has not been invited. The campus’s welcome to new students thus carries a double meaning: Brendan is being received, while his mother is being left behind.

Orientation and Student Life

During Orientation Week, before classes begin, Brendan describes the campus as a place of organized recreation and immediate social opportunity. A Welcome-to-BSU Field Day on the main quad offers tug-of-war, ring toss, water balloons, and a Slip ’N Slide. Warm weather brings students outside, and Brendan notices both the women’s clothing and tattoos as possible openings for conversation. He and Zack take off their shirts after working out over the summer, treating their physiques as another part of how they present themselves among new peers.

The early days are largely shared with Zack. They go to the gym, where both can bench one hundred and eighty pounds, though Zack manages five repetitions to Brendan’s four. The next day they try the climbing wall in the Student Center after getting high. Neither can manage a route above 5.6. When Brendan loses his grip about thirty feet up, the auto belay catches him and brings him back down; the harness painfully restrains him, and Zack finds the fall funny. The episode gives the campus’s recreational spaces a less polished texture than the welcome activities: here, friendship is made through competition, risk, embarrassment, and laughter.

Classes and the Campus Threshold

The transition from orientation to academic life is marked by a required meeting with an academic advisor to finalize Brendan’s schedule and receive a last college pep talk. His advisor, Devin Torborg of the Anthropology Department, corrects Brendan when he calls him Professor: he is technically an instructor, not on the tenure track, and prefers to be called Devin. The encounter introduces the university not only as a residential and social environment but also as an institution with its own ranks and forms of address.

Devin begins to describe college as the beginning of a great something, then loses the next word and scowls. The faltering pep talk contrasts with the confident language of a fresh start. Berkshire State University offers Brendan the freedom to do what he wants without answering to anyone but himself, but he also admits that he might have been just as happy to remain at Haddington High, where he knew everyone, could play varsity sports, and earned steady grades without much effort. The campus’s importance lies in holding those competing feelings together: the promise of independence and the unease of being unknown, the lively welcome and the first experience of separation.