Hey! Its Bushroot! In the flesh!

These six words shattered the little world that I created for myself during my freshman year at Syracuse University. Up until that point, I had considered myself to be pretty much nailing the whole college thing as I adjusted to life eight hours away from my Maryland childhood home. I was getting good grades, keeping my homesickness mostly in check, convincing myself that I enjoyed cheap beer and making new friends. Cool new friends. Cool new bro friends, to be exact.

I was on cloud nine about being accepted into the Brewster Hall dorm crew, which was led by a group of guys who lived on the floor below me and who loved to do the ultimate college bro stuff, such as smoke weed and watch sports. One of them even initiated a hookup with me on the very first night of college. He was drunk and he never looked me in the eye after that but still.

Growing up, I was a bit of a late bloomer both physically and socially. I could hardly believe that these guys saw me for who I really was: a cute, fun, friendly girl who was cool enough to be privy to their inside jokes including and especially the one about Bushroot.

Bushroot was a squat, gnome-like creature that one of the bros had sketched out at the beginning of the semester to be our dorm mascot. It had bulging eyes and a dark shaded face ringed by short spiky hair. The guys proudly hung photocopies of the Bushroot sketch up on all their walls. They would approach the sketch and ask, Bushroot, should I take another hit from this bong? Or someone in the room would suddenly whisper Shroot and then theyd all repeat the name in turn, escalating the volume until they were shouting. They would invite the girls, myself included, to chant Bushroot along with them and then they would hoot and holler when we did.

Then, one night, I found out that this mascot and therefore the whole Bushroot joke was supposed to be a caricature of me. A guy from a different dorm was hanging out in Brewster Hall. When he saw me face to face, he blurted out those six fateful words: Hey! Its Bushroot! In the flesh!

I retreated to the privacy of my dorm room and tried to deny that I had heard him correctly. Im Bushroot? I thought. The stupid-looking mascot thing that everyone thinks is so hilarious? How?!

But Bushroot had enough similarities to my appearance that I had to believe it. The shaded skin, for one. And the spiky hair. I understood that my Afro-style cropped cut was an unconventional look for our white, affluent, sorority-laden upstate New York campus. It was for me, too. I had never done anything so bold when it came to my appearance. I had gotten a burst of confidence after high school, though, and wanted to make a start strong in this new chapter in my life. I wanted to show up to college and really be someone.

I just didnt want to be the dorm mascot.