403 students become a community
A letter from Upsilon
Door Maja-Magdalena Klein
By Maja-Magdalena Klein
Maja-Magdalena Klein
Five tabs are open on my computer screen. Then, as the clock strikes 9, I hit the menacing virtual button. The webpage seems to hesitate for a split second. My adrenaline skyrockets. Then, finally, a timer pops up and I’m urged to fill out the form within ten minutes. Do I accept the terms and conditions? Of course.
It’s a beautiful Monday morning in April 2021 and I have a room!
My relief is palpable. Not getting the room in the SHH accommodation would have meant going back to my house-hunting Facebook profile. I would yet again have had to try selling my personality in Facebook groups, full of too-good-to-be-true offers or exorbitantly priced 5 m2 rooms. That nagging fear of having to sleep in a tent if I didn’t secure a place in time would have returned.
Slowly the adrenaline disappears. I call my mom in a state of euphoria to share the news: I have a room in a unit with seven strangers, all internationals starting their studies at the UG in September. I am excited and crazy nervous at the same time.
New home
Five months later, I stand in front of the imposing grey fourteen-storey building that will be my home for the next year. ‘Welcome to Upsilon’ the façade in front of me says. The entrance hall is buzzing with other young adults dragging their suitcases, houseplants, and parents along. Everyone seems both stressed and excited. ‘Here is your key and the WiFi-password’, a woman with a Dutch accent says to me.
I go up to the ninth floor. I place my ukulele on the window sill and put up my first little cactus, while observing all the cyclists between the tall buildings and narrow canals that I can see from my window. I will soon be one of them.
Happy birthday, International Relations loser. Love, the SSH Fam
I am a little nervous to meet my new housemates. After all, I will see them every day for the entirety of the upcoming year – what if we don’t get along? All of a sudden, I hear voices behind me. I turn to find two guys and a girl peeking around the door. The girl in the middle smiles at me: ‘There is an ESN party tonight at the Palace, would you like to join?’
One month later, a cake greets me as I walk into my own surprise birthday party. ‘Happy birthday, International Relations loser. Love, the SSH Fam’, it reads.
All seven of my housemates have gathered, put on little party hats and inflated what must have been thirty balloons. I am still trying to find my place in Groningen, but this truly made me feel like I belong for the first time. And it only gets better after that.
Christmas
As the seasons change, the birthday party decorations become Christmas decorations. I buy Christmas lights, someone else gets a little Christmas tree, and we put little snowflake stickers on the windows. Our kitchen whiteboard has a list of everyone’s birthday, so that we will not forget.
We grow inside and outside of our student accommodation. The bigger cosmos around us also evolves: from our kitchen window, we can see more and more groups of students playing soccer on the rooftop terrace, coming home drunk from parties, or writing messages in their windows with post-its. People share cigarettes in front of the entrance and help each other fix their bikes in the bike shed. Walking in the building and smelling the laundromats starts to feel like coming home.
Walking in the building starts to feel like coming home
Small communities form and merge into a bigger one. Pictures of underwear lost in the washing machines, bike keys found in the hallways, and questions like ‘How the heck do you exchange the fire alarm batteries? The alarm sound is driving all of us insane’ are regularly posted in the Upsilon group chat.
Soon enough, the mundane SSH trash disposal posters in the elevators give way to ‘Harry and Ryan’s Student Barber Shop,’ ‘Win an Amazon voucher if you participate in my research!,’ and ‘Join the Rave Next Week!!!’ The soon-to-be students that all sat in front of a screen with me that one April morning have not only become tenants, but inhabitants of the building.
Garfield
We even get a communal pet. Neighbourhood cat ‘Garfield’, as 64 out of 75 votes in a WhatsApp poll in the Upsilon group chat name him, is a welcome intruder. When it is brought up that Garfield is actually female and also needs a title, even ‘Queen Garfeldina van der Upsilon of Paddepoel’ is met with approval. Only the SSH administration is not too thrilled about our fondness of the cat.
And we party! On the rooftop, in a studio, in a shared apartment… Sometimes the Upsilon barber even gives people a fresh fade in the middle of a party. The SSH security personnel are regularly on the hunt for spontaneous party animals. What helps is keeping our windows tightly shut, because both smoke and music are easy to spot from just about anywhere outside the building.
In the moment, the messy house party or 2 a.m. kitchen conversation does not seem all that significant. But in retrospect, they are what made Upsilon a home for hundreds of first-year students who will forever associate this place with their student life. I’m one of them.
Nostalgia
I have my biggest moment of clarity about this when my doorbell just keeps ringing at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night in the middle of June.
‘Who is that?’ my housemate asks, a little annoyed. Maybe someone wanted to play a prank on us in those last couple of weeks at Upsilon? I check the time and see messages lighting up my phone. ‘Hey Maja. Do you happen to be home? I know this is very random.’
This apartment will soon also only be a fond memory of mine
Three months before my first year came to an end, I had reconnected with an old friend that I had not seen in years. It turned out that Phil, who had started his studies in Groningen a year before me, actually lived in the very same Upsilon unit I now live in. He and his former Upsilon housemates have spontaneously decided on a nostalgic visit.
The bliss on his face when he enters apartment 37 and once more sees its familiar dirty kitchen counters, the scratches in the kitchen table and notes he has left underneath his old desk – it’s unparalleled.
He and the friends he made across multiple floors in Upsilon immediately let us in on the experiences that have shaped them in their first ever student home. He still misses living in the same building as all of his best friends, although he didn’t mind leaving the dirty kitchen behind.
New generation
I realise then that this apartment will soon also only be a fond memory of mine, instead of a home I return to after every lecture, exam or a day in the park at Noorderplantsoen. Despite the early nostalgia, I know I am ready to begin a new chapter when my one-year contract ends.
I’ve gladly left my first-year student spirit in Upsilon, to be adopted by its future tenants. New students are staying in my room now, looking at my view, and dirtying my kitchen.
To the new generation of Upsilon tenants I say: make the building your own. Put up posters, build a community, get a haircut from your local Upsilon barber (maybe not if you are drunk, though, but that is up to you). Go grocery shopping with your housemates, let them sleep in your room if they have locked themselves out and have the 2 a.m. discussions that might mend their broken heart in a new city. If you do, I am sure you will one day also visit your old apartment again and dwell in some first-year nostalgia.
P.S: There is a YouTube video on how to change the fire alarm batteries. It might make you the hero of your unit. Also, clean the shared airfryer every once in a while. You are welcome.