Animal house

Talk long enough to classroomfuls of people who write down everything you say, and eventually you’ll start to think you know it all. It can be bracing to find yourself in an environment where things don’t always make sense. When I told my family and friends that I was planning to move into a first-year residence hall, they told me I was insane. They are animals! They are messy! You’ll trip over their garbage! They are dangerous and violent! You’ll get hurt! They’ll hate you! You’ll lose your hearing! I’m still trying to figure out who exactly is crazy, myself or everyone else, but one thing is for sure: every day I see things I don’t understand. And a little bit of mystery is the best medicine for a headful of verifiable facts.

My friends were wrong about one thing—when I moved into Wilson Dormitory in Fall 2003 the halls were peaceful. Way quieter than back in the suburb. Not a peep. Just a gentle scritching sound above my ceiling, in the back corner—nothing worth noticing. This is a gig I can stand, I thought. And then one sweltering Tuesday afternoon a horde of humanity thundered through the doors: dazed, car-lagged eighteen-year-olds, dangerous-looking middle-aged men wielding hammers, dripping, purple-T-shirted young adults hauling gigantic boxes, wide-eyed children cringing in the corners of their big sisters’ new bedrooms. More sweat than I’ve ever seen in one place, including Brodie Gym. Moms weeping. Grandmothers fainting. Straight out of Dante. Or Dostoevsky.

Amazingly, everything quieted down. I figured, it’s a one-time thing, it’s over. But that first Friday night, it started up again: bangs, thumps, shrieks, howls, footsteps stampeding up and down the hall. Didn’t sound like party noise, but hey, I’m a different generation. I herded the cat and the child into the back room, where we closed the door, cowered, clutched pillows over our heads and tried to sleep the noise away. Time passed. We had enough food for a few days. But eventually you have to venture forth. And when we did, we noticed a small wire-net cage under the fire escape. Inside, a trembling, white-furred little creature with twitching whiskers, a scrawny, wormlike tail, frightened black eyes and a pleading look. The explanation came in a mass e-mail from Residence Life and Housing Services: a “juvenile opossum” who had taken up residence under the dorm roof had recklessly ventured into the hall. In their zeal to capture him, the residents had neglected to use their indoor voices. Somehow the plucky little fellow had eluded them all. Animal control was called in—hence the cage. Possum Wilson was released into Duke Forest, where he lives to this day. The scritching stopped. And in the seven years since, there has been no noise in the dorm that comes close.

You will see much, though, that you don’t understand. You will be walking quietly down the stairs, and five young men with a Pratt look about them might gallop past snickering, their bodies draped in bubble wrap. A gigantic tree might fall and shatter the beautiful, freshly painted dorm bench—the best one on East Campus—to smithereens. A random resident might befoul his own nest, or its door, or a neighbor’s door, or the kitchen, or even the common room. In an era when a single piece of paper represents the life of an entire baby penguin, a bulletin board might be plastered with multiple versions of the same flyer. A plastic bottle or a newspaper might wind up in the trash instead of the recycling bin. The hallway may serve as a soccer field. Seventy people might cram into the common room in blue t-shirts, or even blue faces, and scream incoherently for two hours at the TV.

On balance, though, it’s best not to judge. You might burn a batch of cookies and set off the smoke alarm. Your cat might stalk friendly guests in your apartment and bite them, drawing blood, or worse: you might get a call from an excruciatingly polite resident assistant at 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and learn that “a cat that looks kind of like yours” has gotten out and has somehow climbed up the outside walls of the dorm to the third story, where it has entered through an open window and jumped onto the stomach of a sleeping resident. At a certain point you might start to wonder who is in more danger: you, who’ve been around the course more than once and know a thing or two, or think you do, or the trustful neighbor who stops in to visit and reaches down impulsively to pat the homicidal feline.

One thing about professors, especially at a smart place like Duke. We know a whole lot about a few things, and more than most people in the world about one or two things. Ask me anything about Anton Chekhov. But there’s a whole lot more that we know nothing about. And there’s a lot to be said for just settling in and letting that great mysterious space, full of brilliant, forgiving people, work its magic.

Carol Apollonio is an associate professor of the practice in Slavic and Eurasian studies and a faculty in residence in Wilson Residence Hall on East Campus. Her column runs every other Friday.