I remember move in day like it was yesterday. My
parents and my best friend at the time, Nicole, came along to help with the
process. I remember Kara passing me in the hall and me whispering to my parents
(I think that’s my roommate!!) Turns out, I was right!
The summer between my last year of high school and
first year of college the popular Dell Computer commercial was the one where
the girl goes to college with all of her pink belongings and her roommate has
all black things and is a Goth. Due to my obsession with all things pink at the
time, I joked around about that being me. I wasn’t too far off either. There I
was moving in all of my brightly colored belongings, pink bedding, closet full
of pink clothes, sunshine and happiness at its finest, when here comes Kara. Kara
wasn’t a Goth, but she definitely was not into the bright colors, especially
not pink! She moved in all of her dark colored things, (she owned a lot of
brown!) and while I was putting pictures of my best friends up on my wall, she
was hanging up posters of bands I had never even heard of. I’m glad Nicole was with me, because I was quite worried about how this was going to go, even though I pretended I was super excited (I really probably was!). When my parents left I occupied myself with decorating my room, touring the campus with Nicole, kind of meeting the people in my dorm, and fretting about Kara! I did have a couple of friends in town, so they helped the first night go by rather painlessly. I did not sleep in my dorm room the first night and I didn’t go to the “mandatory” dorm meeting in the morning. When Kara’s parents asked about me the next morning (they were from Omaha so they stayed the night in town) she told them that I was out for breakfast with my parents. That’s when I know that this girl was awesome, and even though we (obviously) had opposite tastes, we were going to get along just fine.
I did get lost finding my classes on my first day, and I did have second thoughts about being in college, and wondered how I was going to make friends, and how on Earth would I survive without my parents?! I won’t get into my entire freshman year, but let’s just say that I had no issues making friends, I was right to second guess being in school, and I did not survive without my parents! But I did pretty good after my rough freshman year.
Every year at this time I get very nostalgic. I start to think about that first day, first semester, first year, of college at SMSU. I think about the friends I had there, sometimes I even take out my old photo albums and page through them. I start to wonder about where some of them are (the ones I don’t have on Facebook, anyways), how they’re doing, did they ever graduate? (I left before my four years was up..) And, would they even know me if they saw me on the streets?
I start to think about how that year was a big mistake, but then remember about how much that year molded me into the person that I am today. I made some good friends that first year and living in the dorms is something I am glad I experienced, even though I would never want to go back and do it again.
There are many times I think about going back to
school, and this time of year is always one of them that I think about it a
lot. I think about how “I could get a better job”, “I could get paid more”, “I
could move away from here”, “I could make a BIGGER difference in MORE people’s
lives”, “I would really enjoy being back in school”, “I could stop paying on my
loans for awhile”. Ya know, those sorts of things. But then I find myself stuck
on what exactly I would go back to school for. Counseling? Social Work? Something
completely different? I don’t know.
For now I am going to go back to be nostalgic. 