By Kelly Morgan,Staff Writer

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – It’s Sunday morning on Columbus Day weekend and Sasha Campbell has a philosophy paper to write, but that’s the last thing on her mind.

The 18-year-old student at Long Island University, Brooklyn campus, is looking forward to grocery shopping, hanging out with friends and accompanying a roommate to get her nose pierced.

In her first six weeks at school Sasha already has mastered the fine art of procrastination. She’s lounging on a bed in the dorm room she shares with two other students, wearing a maroon T-shirt and jeans, her blond hair falling straight to her shoulders.

“I don’t even do all my reading because, you know, you don’t need to,” she says with a coy smile.

Sasha has figured out that what needs to be learned usually is covered in lectures, and she’s happy to employ that knowledge. “Ohhh, college is so much easier. I love it!”

But this relaxed persona gives way during classes Monday. Sasha didn’t begin her philosophy paper until late the night before and she’s tired. She has a demanding schedule that includes her most challenging class: ballet. Then there’s the problem with her room key. By the time ballet starts, her smile is gone.

Welcome to the ups and downs of freshman year.

Dance

Sasha’s life is dance. It’s why she traveled 400 miles to attend college in a city of more than 8.1 million. It’s why she adheres to a strict diet and skimps on food, often substituting nutrition bars for meals in the afternoon. And it contributes to her tears on a high-pressure day of classes Monday.

She’s considering switching to a fine arts major so she can spend even more time dancing. The change would prevent her from double majoring to pursue a fall-back career in physical therapy.

“It wasn’t as clear to me what the difference was between the programs until I got here,” she says Sunday, contemplating her dilemma. She’s been dancing for 13 years, even teaching classes at a studio in her hometown of Paris, yet she’s hesitant to offer herself completely to the professional dance world.

Sasha already dances at least 20 hours a week in class and outside of class in rehearsals for student-choreographed productions. She also exercises daily. She puts aside her academic studies as needed.

“I mean, I’m here to focus on dancing. So, my mom even said, ‘Your dance classes are more important than anything else,'” she explains.

The environment is competitive, as evidenced by a lecture one of Sasha’s classes gets from Professor Dana Hash-Campbell on Monday. Some students have skipped class rehearsals for various student productions, and Hash-Campbell is irate.

“Let me tell you sweethearts, once you get into a production, you won’t pick when to rehearse, you’ll be told,” she admonishes, adding that she knows many students want to get into the more intensive fine arts program. “Do you think I’m going to let that happen if you behave this way? Not on my watch.”

In Class

Hash-Campbell’s lecture is just one example of the pressure Sasha faces during the week. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays she’s on the go from 10 a.m. until nearly 5 p.m. The Monday of Columbus Day weekend, she was up until 2 a.m. writing her philosophy paper. She slept, then woke up early to finish it before classes.

“I’m so stressed,” she says during a break between philosophy and ballet. One reason: Sasha needs to fix her student I.D. card, which she accidentally folded in half. The card’s magnetic strip won’t work and she can’t swipe access to her dorm room, where she needs to change for ballet. She becomes frustrated as she searches for the office that will issue a new card, running through the maze of hallways, stairwells and elevators that connect a group of buildings on the small university campus.

She finally finds the right room, barely catching the young man staffing the office before he wanders off to lunch. Sasha begs him to give her a new I.D., and is delighted when it doesn’t cost anything.

Then she learns the card has to be activated by another department.

She makes it to ballet on time, but within minutes is in tears, upset by the day.

After class Sasha says she’s fine, then she later confesses she called her mother for comfort. “I vent to her,” she says, describing a practice that began in high school. An only child, Sasha’s close to her mother and they talk frequently over the phone.

But with her mother and stepfather so far away, she weathers any immediate problems on her own.

Student Life

The distance doesn’t bother her. Nor does sharing an open, 27-by-13-foot room with two students on the 16th floor of the only student dormitory on campus. She wanted to go to school in New York and was prepared for these things.

There are awkward moments. There’s drinking – an activity Sasha says she does not participate in – and some students do cocaine. One of Sasha’s roommates sometimes brings different guys back to the room at night.

“I pull the covers up over my head,” she says with a shrug.

Sasha says a bigger problem is when people forget to pull the door to their room tightly shut and the lock doesn’t catch. There are computers and stereos and other valuables that could go.

For now, the majority of Sasha’s friends are fellow dancers. On Sunday, two guys from her class, Daquan Smith and John Sadowski, accompany Sasha and roommate Amia Zoecklein to Manhattan to shop for Halloween costumes and get Amia’s nose pierced.

As it turns out, Daquan sports at least one earring and a nipple piercing, and John just pierced his lip a week before – he admits it’s still hard to talk. Sasha’s other roommate, Andrea Morton, recently went for a tongue piercing.

Amia, from Vermont, explains her desire to adorn her nose and eventually die her hair pink.

“I want to do something different because I’m here. I feel like I’m the same person as when I came, which is OK, but I want to be here fully.”

Sasha agrees, but doesn’t want to do anything too drastic. “People come to college to change,” she says. “I’m like, maybe I’d do another (piercing) on my ear.”

The experience

Sasha loves her school, the dancing and the city, which she now calls home. She’s adjusted to her new life.

Over the weekend, she doesn’t talk wistfully about the hills of western Maine, the home-cooked meals she’s missing or the times spent with old friends. She was ready for something new.

When her parents first dropped her off at school in August, she says, “I kinda had to kick them out.” Her mother had tears in her eyes, “but she didn’t cry, thank God, because if she cried, I would’ve cried.”

Instead of missing home, Sasha is worried about returning. She’s left a small, rural community, population less than 5,000, and moved to one of the largest and most diverse cities in the world. LIU’s Brooklyn campus alone has a student body that’s 46 percent African American and 29 percent Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander, says spokeswoman Peg Byron.

Sasha is thrilled by the diversity and growing used to it. She isn’t bothered when she walks through the neighborhood where her campus is located and men of color notice her pale skin and blond hair. “Vanilla,” they call out. “Snow bunny.”

Thanksgiving will be Sasha’s first test, when she boards a subway and then a train to get to the airport, where she will hop a flight back to Maine.

“I think I’m gonna have a bigger culture shock going back home,” she says.