I've been reading a lot on Facebook how several of my students are packing and moving off to college. I can't help but feel excited for them!
At the risk of sounding old, 28 years ago, almost to the day, was the day I went off to college myself. I remember EVERYTHING about it - packing up my mom and dad's station wagon with all my clothes and belongings (barely filling the back of it), crawling into the driver's seat with my mom riding shotgun. Talking about anything BUT going to school. I remember getting to the dorm and trying to find the registration area and once found, told "Oh! You have the Bunny Room!" confusing the crap out of me and my mother. (Once my room was found, we discovered it was called the "Bunny Room because there was a floor to ceiling painting of the Playboy Bunny in silhouette on one wall - which looked awesome at night when the street lights came into the room.)
I remember how I was excited, yet very apprehensive about leaving home for the first time outside of camp and short trips. How my mom was trying, unsuccessfully, to not cry about her baby going away. Unloading the car and meeting my very strange roommate for the first time. Then, once everything was unloaded, walking her to the car and watching her drive away and trying not to tear up myself as I saw her finally let her tears fall freely....
I remember how I was lucky because my grandparents lived in that town so I went to their house that first night to eat and just hang out for awhile, but still feeling totally alone in the world. How, unknown to me, the next four years would be four of the best years I would have for a long time, including the most fun summer I've ever had in my life. I had my whole world in front of me, and I was young.
I even remember when almost two weeks later I got into a near fight with my roommate which resulted in me realizing it was all because I missed my parents and my home, which helped me in a strange way get over being so homesick. I remember the very first art class I had, and how easy it was to talk to the girls around me, specifically the one blonde that became one of my very best friends for several years. My 5' 5" body walking next to the 7" tall basketball player down the hall and people comparing us. The first real college party I went to. Watching scary movies on Halloween in the lobby with my dorm mates. Getting invited to join a fraternity and passing with the first class of pledges. Late night studying at the library, going to the movies or the local restaurant just for some fries because back then I was a little bitty, skinny thing. Meeting my first foreign classmate (somewhere from Asia) and realizing that despite the language difference we were pretty much the same. Going to the park and hanging out with friends and just about everything that took place over that first year. Getting a lesson from my work study professor boss (along with the other workers) on the difference between colored, black and African American, which was a relatively new term back then. (For reference, he was discussing how we lived in a relatively bland part of the state back then, with mainly just white people inhabiting it. There were very few African Americans, next to no Hispanics and even the Native Americans lived elsewhere. Believe it or not, that one 30 minute discussion as we sat in the reception area of the office opened my eyes a great deal.)
You hear people say, "If I knew back then what I know today I'd do things totally different." I don't think I would. Sure, I wouldn't spend the first two weeks flirting with Susan, the hot girl in my Freshman Composition class, then get up the guts to call her and ask her out for Friday night, only to find out that my delivery apparently wasn't that great because she didn't realize I had asked her out. I wouldn't "break dance" with the basketball players at the first dance. I wouldn't get up at 6:30 every morning that first semester to make sure I was to class on time - and I certainly wouldn't have stood outside the science building on that first day of classes holding the door for about a thousand students to go through when I only meant to hold it for the one good looking girl I'd seen. Among a host of other things that I probably shouldn't write about, but were equally as fun at the time but equally as embarrassing to me now. But, overall, I wouldn't change a thing about my first group of college years.
I have to admit it. I'm jealous of these kids going to school now. I want to have a large group of friends that lived on the same floor as me to hang out and do everything with again. I want to go to college dances. I want to go to the home football and basketball games and act like an idiot in front of everyone, yet not be criticized publicly because EVERYONE was doing it. I want to set up and play four story miniature golf in the dorm again. I want to have Zip Disc Gun Battles again (this was epic, lol!) I want to hang out in the Student Center, listening to the jukebox, playing pool, and meeting new people. I want to be in my fraternity again. I want the parties, I want the boredom - shoot, I guess I just miss that feeling of not knowing what was ahead every day and living each day like it was a party.
But, reality rears it's tired, ugly head. It's true. You can't go back again. I did try once, the second time I went to college. But I was married then, and had a beautiful baby girl so obviously it just wasn't the same. It came with it's only challenges and fun times. But nothing will be like those first years.
I have a message to the incoming Freshman class for 2012.
Enjoy it! You have SO much to look forward to in school this coming year. College isn't just about hitting the books. It's a whole life experience. Meet new people, play hard, and do some growing up. Four years goes by too fast, though sometimes it won't feel like it. Don't listen to the naysayers that spout the "Education is a waste of time" line of baloney. Go to games, go to dances, go to mixers, play games with your friends. Hang out in the student center and watch people. Sign up for intramural sports, even if you suck at it. Explore the town you live in. For some, it's a totally new place. For others, even if you've lived there before, it will hold secrets you were never privy to before - full of hidden treasures and hideouts that you'll remember forever. I have two degrees, and most of a lifetime of job experience in several fields, but I feel that my first four years of college were the most gratifying, most satisfying, most exciting time of my life. Laugh, love and spend some time becoming "YOU". You'll see that the "you" in high school really wasn't the "you" that is to come.
And remember most of all that while you may get things taken from you over the span of your life - taxes, jobs, possessions, in extreme cases but hopefully not, families and friends, and you might not even find a job in your chosen profession for some time after you graduate. But they (whoever they might be) can NEVER take away your college experiences. Those will be yours and yours alone.
Good luck to all the incoming college students, as well as students in high school and grade school this year. I hope you have as much fun as I did way back then!
