The fall semester has reached its halfway point and by now (hopefully) every first-year has determined that no foam pad can save you from the horror that is the blue concrete box Brandeis calls a mattress. On move-in day, if you were like me, you got no sleep the night before the move and had bad anxiety no amount of free Brandeis fidget spinners could solve. So naturally, under those emotionally tasking situations, any mattress or surface for that matter is comfortable. But then as time pressed on and emotions shifted from first day nerves to “IDGAF” about this essay due tomorrow I began to notice some lower back pain. You know the spot, right above the buttocks and below the ribs. You know, in that place where you might have

a tattoo that says something like “head first,” “get some,” “insert tramp stamp here,” or even “Ruth, Beth, Carol, Julia, Esther, Rachel, Amber?”

This lower back pain progressively got worse and worse, and no amount of stretching could solve it. Naturally, I began to wonder where it was coming from and because I had a foam cover on my mattress, I never considered my bed as an option because “why would my bed betray me?” So, my first thought was that it was the Rabb steps. A challenge of biblical proportions to walk up. Moses may be able to walk through a puddle, but Brandeis students can climb that mountain of stairs. So I then did everything in my power to avoid going up those stairs. Yet that didn’t ease my back pain. 

My options were narrowing, and as the days persisted, all I needed was a good night of rest to clear my mind. So, I slept and slept and slept (even as my alarm for class goes off) and kept sleeping. Once I woke up, I knew what was giving me all that back pain: the stretching! Duh, what else could it be? Stretching only helps you relax and whatever, blah blah blah physical therapy talk, so obviously I shouldn’t stretch. Days of not stretching did not get rid of the pain, so then what the actual f*ck could be giving me these problems? It certainly couldn’t be the fine Brandeis mattress that I am paying $70,000 to sleep on. Why would Brandeis give me a sh*tty mattress? What incentive do they have to save money by purchasing cheap mattresses? Certainly, Ron Liebowitz cares about me more than that… Jamele Adams told me this was my house and that everyone was welcome… Why would they give me a mattress that is not welcoming?

Then on one fateful day as I changed and washed all my sheets and bed covers, I got to see the beast that was my mattress. My cheap pad from the Brandeis bookstore was nothing more than an over glorified yellow tissue, and there it was: my mattress. I sat on it just to see how it felt naturally. One might say I now know my mattress more intimately than I ever needed to. It clearly had some skeletons in its closet. I could only wonder how many men had been on top of it and rolled all over it. God, how disgusting! And as I laid down, the mattress didn’t feel soft but as if the Rocky Mountains were underneath my freaking back. What was this quality of living? Brandeis had let me down. They may as well have sent all students a message after they submitted their deposit a letter with just the words “your sleep” and then the middle finger emoji letting you know you were f*cked.

So here we all are at Brandeis. Tricked, sleeping on terrible mattresses and thinking we will all get into Skyline next year. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the mattresses aren’t any better there! So kiss your good sleep goodbye and tell Ron Liebowitz that as he enjoys his almost seven figure income, luscious home and soft bed. We will be here crying alone and single in a forced triple.

Editor’s note: This is the first part of the series “Why am I Here?”