The transition from high school to college is a difficult time for everyone. The environment is more stressful and fast paced, work load is increased, and everything seems bigger. While all these hold true for me, the last one is especially overwhelming. I graduated from Living Word Lutheran High School this spring with 49 other kids. That's it. Our graduation ceremony was about 1-1.5 hours, and I knew every persons first and last name along with an extensive background on them. There were pros and cons to graduating from such a small class, but it did exactly what High School is supposed to do: prepare me for the next step.

Overall, Living Word provided me with a wonderful community of people and gave me a great faith based education. But it was a bit lacking in some areas. We didn't have a cafeteria until my sophomore year, we ate in a hallway. When the spring/fall drama productions were happening in the gym, PE classes were either outside or classroom based activities. We had no auditorium. But what we lacked in space and facilities, we made up for in a tight faith-based community that worked hard together.

Fast forward four years, and I graduated from Living Word and came to the University of Iowa. Here, we have state of the art facilities, technology, and community. While the campus is much much larger than I'm used to, once you get the feel of it, it doesn't feel so big. I still feel the same amount of tight knit camaraderie that I felt at Living Word, only on a much larger scale. Although I don't know all of their names, much less an extensive background on them, we're all Hawkeyes. And that unites us.

So how do I feel making such a drastic change in environment, size, and location? I'll admit, I was a little bit nervous at first, as is everyone. I'm not trying to downplay the severity of the change. But now, it feels like home. It doesn't matter what size school you go to, how far away it is, or what kind of resources you have access to. Whether its a class of 50 in Jackson, WI or a class of 5,000 in Iowa City, IA life is what you make it. You decide if you're going to enjoy your time, or if you're gonna let it get the better of you.