As many of you might already know, apparently the kind folks at Founders Hall decided I will be graduating this coming May. Well, that means college is over for me, at least for a while. So, when this thought struck my feeble mind, I got to reminiscing, and – when I wasn’t so teary-eyed like the kind of pansy I always complain about in my articles – I came up with some really cool stuff I thought I’d share with you about what college has meant to me during these last four years and what we can learn from it all.
What I first found out during those vivid flashbacks and such is that, it seems college has become routine for Americans these days. It seems to be just the next step in life. High school is over, and it’s not time to be completely self-sufficient, so there is this intermediary, a buffer before that 9-to-5 that’s not too far off. In college, dorm life replaces that bedroom back in that suburban house you grew up in, the one with clean carpets, paint chips still intact and – of course – a fully working kitchen with a fridge that remains magically stocked with food at all times (though multiple cans of PBR were not in it for your consumption, so it was lacking in some respects).
Anyway, the day-to-day, meat and potatoes – the student’s version of the 9-to-5 – doesn’t change that much from high school to college. More lectures, books, papers, exams – everything just a little bit bigger and more difficult. But there has to be something more to college. It is not just high school, part two. Such a view would belittle it. Such an outlook degrades it. That kind of thinking takes away the true value college possesses. The thing is, though, that value needs to be appreciated by the individual, and the opportunities that abound in college need to be utilized, not taken for granted.
College is like many things in life in that it’s only worth what you put into it. Sadly, I’ve noticed that, for many, it is just seen as the next step, just one without parents nagging us at every chance they get. But then, college is just school away from home, and I know it has been more than that to me. Yes, I want that diploma, too, so I can get a decent job, but I didn’t come here viewing college as merely a means to an end. It has intrinsic value. It has the ability to change someone.
I know it sounds lame that I feel college matures us kids. After all, we are legally adults when we enter. Everyone says the same thing about high school, so according to that logic we’d have no more room for growing up. But we do. I’m 22 now, and I feel very different from my first year sharing a room with an old high school buddy in the Gladding Residence Center. I was a young na