For about as long as I can remember, the television series Gilmore Girls has been one of the most prominent things in my life. My first memory of this show is being around 10 or 11 and living in a house that had green carpeted stairs when we moved in, until we redid them with tile. I was sitting with my mom in my parents room and we were discussing something to start watching. She suggested Gilmore Girls, it was a show that she had watched when I was even younger. Now this is a show about a single mom, Lorelai, and her daughter Lorelai, most known as Rory and their small town New England life. I remember watching it for the first time with my mother and being immediately drawn into these characters and their lives. Quickly on, I got impatient and didn’t want to wait for my mom to watch the next episode so I continued it on my own and it became my show. And at 10 or 11 that is a very big deal.
At 20, I still consider it to be my show. In the last decade of my life or so, there has always been an episode of Gilmore Girls to turn to. In my younger days, that episode may have been one of a random favorite that I would put on after a bad day of school. But as I’ve grown, I’ve turned to episodes such as Rory’s graduation from high school which I found comfort in the night before my high school graduation. Or the one where Rory moves to college and soon realizes that she needs her mom already, I shared that experience too.
The first couple seasons of the show follow Rory through her high school years, in season 4 Rory embarks on her college experience and the show ends a few days after her college graduation. There is a lot of disagreement on Rory’s character arc through seasons 4-7, this is something I imagine I’ll dive deeper into in later blog posts. For now let me say, you truly can’t understand Rory’s college experience until you’ve lived it. On the edge of being far too parasocial, I find many parts of myself in Rory’s character which has become a great comfort to me.
When I was in high school and thinking about deciding on a major for college, it was a no brainer for me – I wanted to do something with literature. Now my reasoning for this does come from my lifelong love of words but I would be lying a bit if I didn’t admit that some of that reasoning came from Rory Gilmore. Now Rory attended Yale University as an English major with a focus in journalism, and I attend a rather small university in western Maine as a Creative Writing and English major so I do claim some individuality here.
Gilmore Girls happened to be a great conversation starter for when searching for a roommate for freshman year of college as well. One of my favorite aspects of this show is Rory’s relationship with her high school rival and future college roommate, Paris Geller. Paris is my favorite character in the show, and I find a lot of myself in her as well. When I first began talking with my now roommate, we realized that we were both huge fans of the show and were left to question who is Rory and who is Paris. And in most cases, I am Paris and she is Rory but honestly we are about 50/50 each.
In this particular story, however, I am definitely Rory and she is Paris. Over winter break, my roommate found herself in the hands of a sewing machine which she has since brought back with her into our room. There is a time in Gilmore Girls where Paris is advised to create a craft corner in her and Rory’s dorm, to help her deal with her emotions. For the last few days, my roommate has been navigating her new found hobby which somehow amounts to miniscule pieces of fabric ending up everywhere around our room. Paris evidently gets mad at her craft corner in the middle of the night and Rory wakes up to macaroni and the smell of a glue gun taking over their space. While a glue gun is now always in view for me as well, and the whirring of a sewing machine is a familiar sound, this really added a beautiful layer to my roommate and my Gilmore Girls lifestyle.
Until next week when some other aspect of my college life feels a little too similar.
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