This past semester, I lived in Walt Disney World, Florida as a part of the Disney College Program. If you don't know what that is, it's basically an internship where you get to work in the parks for a semester.

So many people have asked me about my experience. Most of the time, people genuinely want to know what I thought about it; if I liked it, if it was as much fun as it seems if it's really a good place to work. But sometimes, people are a bit more condescending.

People have said things to me about how it could affect my future. They didn't see why I would do it when I didn't get any credit for my major. They didn't understand why I would waste a semester of my college experience away from campus. They didn't understand why I wouldn't want to graduate with my friends.

They asked me if I was sure it was a good decision to graduate a semester late, pushing back my career.

If I'm being honest, I asked myself the same questions. I didn't know how it would affect my future to go on the college program. But if I'm being honest, before I went on the program, I wasn't sure I would have much of a future.

I applied for the Disney College Program while sitting in my pajamas at my kitchen table in my apartment. It was 1:30 AM on a Tuesday night, and I was crying, partially because the bowl of pasta I was eating was the first food I'd had since that morning at 10, but also because I was so overwhelmed, overtired, and burnt out. I didn't really know what else to do.

I felt like I was out of options.

At this point, I'd been depressed for the entirety of my college experience. I was too overwhelmed for my own good, I wasn't sure about my major because I hated waking up and going to classes in the morning, and I felt like I had a hard time making friends. This was mostly because of what happened the year before I left for college.

My senior year of high school was one of the hardest years of my life. Within 7 months of each other, my dad, my friend, and my uncle passed away unexpectedly. Exactly two weeks after my uncle's funeral was my first day of college classes. I didn't know what to do with myself. I felt like I was expected to move on and make a new home after losing so much of what my life was before.

It felt like everything was rapidly changing around me, but I felt frozen in place, unable to move on as quickly as the world did.

Because of everything that happened, my mom told me I was allowed to take a gap semester if I wanted to. But I decided that I wanted some semblance of normalcy, and sitting at home while all of my friends were in school wasn't going to help me feel better. So, I went to school anyway. And I was miserable.

My freshman year of college was absolutely terrible. I called my mom every day. I went home every weekend. I felt like I couldn't make friends. It was taking all of my efforts and focus to simply exist, so I barely cared about my classes.

I felt so lonely, even though I somehow managed to make a few friends. I felt like I didn't belong there. And it felt like all of my friends were adjusting fine in their new lives, so I felt even worse.

My sophomore year, I promised myself I would try harder to be a part of the community. I joined some new activities and I got a part-time job. I made new friends who were actually in my program so I wasn't sitting alone every day. But things still didn't seem to get better.

I was still having panic attacks and anxiety. I still couldn't make myself do things or pretend that everything was okay. Towards the end of the first semester of my sophomore year, I began commuting every day, even though I was still paying for an apartment.

Everything felt kind of hopeless and, if I'm being honest, I wanted to drop out of college at that point. I hated every second I was there, so what was the point of pushing through just to cry every night and do extremely average in all of my classes?

So sitting there, in my apartment, I thought about an article I'd read on the Odyssey months before in the spring of 2017 called "Surviving the Suicide of my Best Friend." In telling her story, the author (Alexa Seary) addressed the idea that sometimes, you need a big change to readjust when bad things happen.

And what she did was apply for the Disney College Program.

I pulled up the website on my laptop within seconds. And I looked at the deadline for applications for the spring semester. And I still had 1 day left to apply. It felt like a sign.

And so, at the tiny kitchen table, I attached my Linkedin to my account and hit submit on my DCP application form. Because why not? What did I have to lose?

I didn't tell anyone that I applied until I got past 2 phases of the 3 step interview process, and then I only told my mom and two of my friends. I genuinely didn't think I was going to past the first stage of the application process, let alone get into the program.

So on October 25, 2017, when I got an email from the Walt Disney Company titled "Congratulations," I started crying in front of everyone. I called my mom and told her that I got in, but that I didn't know if I could do it. I told her all of the reasons I couldn't. And she said, "Of course you're going to do it."

I was nervous to leave home, especially after everything that had happened. I was worried about my family, worried about what I would do if something else went wrong while I was gone.

I didn't know how I'd be able to handle leaving after so much had already changed. I'd never spent more than 3 weeks away from home before, and even my college is only 25 minutes away from my hometown. I didn't know if I'd be able to do it.

When my mom and I drove down in January, I cried at least ten times. I asked her if we could turn back multiple times on the way down. Even when we got to our hotel room at All Star Movies, I asked my mom if I could come home. She looked at me and smiled, brushed my hair out of my face and said, "No."

She said, "You're not going to be able to change anything. You can't keep anything from happening. You don't have control over the entire universe. So, whether you're home or you're in Disney, something bad might happen. So you might as well have a good time here instead of waiting around for things to go wrong."

And so, my mom moved me into my apartment in Chatham Square and left to go back home to Pennsylvania.

The job that I was offered was for Tomorrowland Terrace in the Magic Kingdom, but since TLT is only a seasonal restaurant, the rest of the time I worked was at Casey's Corner. Both of the jobs were right in front of Cinderella's Castle, and I loved that I could see (or at least hear) the fireworks every night.

Tomorrowland Terrace is also where they have the firework dessert parties, so I got to spend a lot of time making guest's experiences more magical. It was my favorite part of working there.

It wasn't always sunshine and rainbows, even working in the Magic Kingdom. There were times where I was so exhausted from working 12+ hour shifts for six days in a row that I wanted to quit. There were weeks where I worked ten days in a row, 45 hours a week. I spent a lot of time being exhausted and working with guests that weren't very happy that they waited 25 minutes in line to order a hot dog.

But there was never a time where I wasn't grateful that I got to work in the Magic Kingdom. One of my favorite experiences was when I met a family that had just officially adopted 5 kids and came to WDW to celebrate being a family. To make their trip as "magical" as possible, I gave each of the kids a free dessert and Mickey straws, and my leader even talked to them about extra food for their family, since they were on a budget.

Another time, we had a light dessert party, so I got to pick a family who was there for their first visit to come to the dessert party for free.

Some days were hard, but the people I worked with made the hard days easier. I met some of the most incredible people I will ever know during my time at Disney. The days we worked together were spent laughing, telling stories, and singing along to the fireworks. After work, we'd get breakfast food or milkshakes at 2 AM. We spent our days off together, going on trips or going into the parks.

My friends were the biggest part of the college program for me. They made me do things that I wouldn't have done otherwise, like driving two hours to Clearwater to see the dolphin from Dolphin Tales, or seeing Smash Mouth when they came to play at Epcot, or even making last minute dinner reservations at one of the sit-down restaurants on our day off. They were the reason that I had such an amazing experience, and I am so thankful for them.

I never expected to be able to do half of the things I did while I was in Disney. I didn't think I would ever get to see Harry Potter World at Universal. I never thought I'd be able to go to any of the Disney parks as much as I've been in Disney World. I never expected to love working there so much or to be able to have such a family in the people I met. I never thought that I'd be able to live away from home.

Before I went on the DCP, I felt like I didn't have a lot of options. I felt like the last two years of my life were a blur. I was sad all the time, and I couldn't make myself less sad. I felt like I was drowning in my own life and no matter what I did, I couldn't drag myself back above the water.

Now, things are easier.

I'm not saying that the Disney College Program cured my depression. But it did make my life a little bit easier to handle. I was excited about something. It got me out of the headspace I was in, where I was constantly thinking about what could go wrong every day. It gave me the time and space away from my regular life to deal with all of the things that happened around me.

Most importantly, it made me feel like things weren't going to be terrible forever. Sure, I had days where I was sad, but there were days and weeks where I felt so happy, I wanted to cry. And that was the first time in a long time I felt that way.

So when people ask me, "Was the Disney College Program worth it? Even though you didn't get internship credit? Even though you wasted a semester of your college career? Even though you're going to graduate late?"

I'm always going to say, "Yes."