To my dear friends at Duval College.
For many of us, it’s been five years since we first met over a game of breakfast bingo or in the halls of F Block. 2013 was the year of many new friends for me. Despite many of my friends from first year moving on, my decision to stay at college for a second year was undoubtedly the best decision I have ever made.
I wasn’t to know what was to come, but I know my life would have taken a very different path if it wasn’t for my friends down the hall, up the stairs or across the courtyard of Duval College at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales.
Because, when my world came tumbling down that Tuesday night in March 2013, it wasn’t my childhood friends, high school besties or even my family who could be there for me, it was you.
You were the ones who heard the wails of a girl who just lost her sister echo up the stairwell. You were the ones who pulled my limp body from the floor and walked me – step by step – to my room as I cried out her name; the ones who packed my bags with all the things I didn’t know I needed and held me in your arms as I stared blankly into my wardrobe looking for something to wear to my 17-year-old sister’s funeral.
You were the ones who saw me off that sad and foggy night with hugs, adrenaline and teary eyes. The ones I left behind to cry in the hallway, while I went home to the empty space that had been left by my sister, and my devastated parents, who had only just got home from the hospital.
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I loved my 4 years at a UNE college-EPC forever! 15 years on from starting, some of my friends from then are still my closest, some I rarely talk to, but when I do it’s like we were never apart. It’s been hard hearing so many awful stories about university colleges in recent months, because for me it was an amazing time in my life. I didn’t go through anything as awful as you did, but having a community of people around me 24-7 for the good times and bad-the pub nights, the breakups, the kitchen surprise meals, the nothing times hanging out in the common room, were all so special. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat!