College
“My first day [in college was]the most memorable day in my life…I can still remember it clearly. It opened before me a new horizon of life” (http://eassy-writing-all.blogspot.com/2016/07/my-first-day-at-college.html)
Throughout middle and high school, you heard your teachers say “college is valuable…you’ll need to know this one day for college…you can’t act like this in college!”
College. What the hell is this place?
Since you were young, the word has come up again and again in school. There was always something to look to — the ever elusive “college.”
As you turn on your television, you see various renditions of this “college life” — in shows and movies — and it looks…fun. Young adults are running amok, having a good time, going on road trips, living with their friends, and then there’s this thing called “Greek Life”?… There’s freedom. There’s agency.
College. What the hell IS this place?
As you reach closer and closer to high school graduation, you realize that your opportunity to join this mystical realm may be near. You just have to take it.
So, you do, and you find yourself smack in the middle of your campus on your first day… or, if you aren’t commuting, you find yourself smack in the middle of your dorm room during move-in week. And well…
This is where the story diverges. Everyone’s college experience is unique, but I can share with you what my experience has been like. Maybe some of it will resonate with you.
When I made that first step onto USC’s campus, I was so unbelievably excited. I was living on campus away from my folks, and, having grown up in a home where my mother ran a tight ship, this was the most liberating feeling in the world. You mean, I could stay out past 10:00 pm?? What??
However, things didn’t really turn out as I expected them to.
See, I came into USC as a pre-health, Biochemistry major (yikes), and this literally meant one thing — intense.
So, instead of living the life I saw in the movies — spontaneous road trips with friends, being a delinquent at 1 in the morning, and the like — I was studying with my friends, cramming for those exams. At least I was still up at 1 in the morning…
What the hell was my life? What was I doing here? Did I make the right choice? Holy. Crap.
College, What the HELL is this place?
Well, I came to see that it was what you made it. I had that freedom after all. So, I did some crazy things to my major, and my major became majors — Biology and Theatre.
With the Theatre major, the intensity was… different. I found myself glistening underneath the warmth of stage lights. I found my love for writing and remember staying up until 3 A.M., completely invigorated, just because I wanted to finish a scene I got the idea for at midnight.
How did I go from being a person who was always buried nose-first in a textbook to being a person who let her imagination run wild? How did I come to realize how creative I could be when I started off in one of the least creative majors out there?
Remember how I said I started off as pre-health? Well, now I want to write for television. Wild.
College.
Freedom. Independence. Confusion. Existential Crises. Self-discovery.
Compressed into these years is a once in a lifetime journey of emotional and educational exploration. If your experience was anything like mine, you took a path you never thought you would. You may have even discovered some talents you never knew you had. You may be even more confused about your future than you were when you started… but that’s okay.
Because, you’ve come out on the other side having grown as a person. You have a new set of tools, a bank of knowledge, and perhaps even a new, broadened perspective on life.
It truly is a new world, now. You’re ready and prepared to take on so much more.
Sounds pretty coming of age, right?
Wild.
I’ll see you next week.
Alli D.
