There’s no doubt that times have changed since our parents were our age. From prices of gas, technology advances, today’s vocabulary, and everything else in between. As young adults, while we can’t say we’ve experienced all of this personally, we’ve certainly heard about how times have changed from our parents. We probably hear about it more often than we would like to. I can’t count the times I’ve heard my dad tell my brother and I how he and my uncles had to hike up a hill in the snow everyday just to get to school, and just how easy we have it today. This topic of how times have changed since my parents were my age started to come up a lot in my house during my senior year of high school, and still continues to make its way into many of our conversations at the dinner table.

These conversations all started when I wanted to attend college in Montana, in a town nine hours away from our current home in Boise, Idaho. I thought that my reasoning for wanting to go away for school was pretty average for a high school senior. I wanted to be on my own, away from home. The campus was beautiful, there were a million plus things to do in the town, and one of my best friends since pre-k was attending in the fall as well. I was excited. I did everything I could to try to warm my parents up to the idea of me leaving home. Let’s just say that they weren’t as thrilled of the idea as I was. It was hard for them to understand why I was willing to pay more money to go to an out of state school when I could go to our local university and receive the same education. My answer to them was “the experience.” I wanted the college experience of leaving home and doing my own thing, of going to a big school and doing all of the things you were supposed to do while in college.

In the end I decided not to go to Montana. I decided to stay in state and go to a university three hours away from home. It was a tough decision, one that came after many arguments between myself and the people I love most, ones that I now realize were silly and definitely not worth it. I was upset with my parents at first. I was angry that they didn’t want for me what I so badly wanted for myself, something I worked so hard for during my four years in high school. However, during my first year of college I began to understand why we hadn’t seen eye-to-eye when it came to choosing where I was going to spend my next four years.

My parents went to school strictly to go to school. And yes, I know you’re thinking that that’s why everyone goes to school, but in reality it’s not. My parents went through college and paid for everything on their own. They worked hard so that they could support themselves, and they went to the cheapest school they could attend so that they wouldn’t be paying for it later. They were smart. I’ve realized that many people today go to these huge universities just to be able to say they did. And it turns out that they aren’t having any more fun than I am. In fact, being able to throw my dirty laundry in the backseat of my car and drive three hours so that my mom can wash my clothes and feed me dinner for the weekend is pretty freaking awesome.

There’s a great amount of pressure surrounding young people on which college they pick to attend. I used to be guilty of thinking that in order to have “the college experience,” I needed to go far away from home to a big school with tens of thousands of students, all who were strangers to me. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I love the smaller university where I’m at today and I’m grateful to my parents for showing me that you don’t need to go far away to make the most of your time in college. All that really matters are the memories you’ll make with the special people you’ll meet along the way.

…and don’t worry Dad, the grades matter too!