For the majority of high school graduates in America the summer after they graduate is a time of simultaneous celebration, stress, worry, fear, happiness and excitement. For me that last one has been especially prominent and only been heightened by my recent orientation at the college that I will be attending. Many of my peers have become a lot less enthusiastic as the days grow nearer and they desperately try to finish preparing for the transition into higher education while also fearing the loss of their high school years as they truly become young adult. With my ecstatic nature at an all time high, I have decided to write the five reasons that I am so excited to start College.

1. It's What I Expected From My High School Expectations

When I was a middle schooler about to enter High school I could hardly control my excitement. The thought of gaining more freedom and being in a school with several hundred, if not a thousand people, my age who I could interact with was a dream for my that giddy and extroverted 7th grader. I thought about getting to go to parties and have wild times just enjoying being young, joining clubs to meet people of similar interest and just the thrill of being in the high school environment. That all came crashing down though when I moved and was forced to go to a high school that was essentially private and in an area so different from where I had come from it may as well had been Mars. My class size also shrunk from 700 kids in my grade alone to 124 and only about 300 in the whole school. High school was kind of a bummer after that since it just meant that I was stuck with this one small group of people who I honestly could not relate to the majority of the time since I was not from there. Now that I am going to a college that actually has everything I was expecting in high school--attached with the freedom of being an independent young adult--I am hoping I can make up for the experiences lost.

2. New People

One of the things that made me most excited at my orientation was when I looked around at the other college students there. As previously stated, I was coming from a high school where I had spent four years with the same 100+ people and nobody else. Since it was a borderline private school most of them were pretty similar as well with the same beliefs, hobbies, views and general personalities. For someone coming from a place where everyone you met seemed to be a whole new kind of person this was practically exhausting. So now that I have the opportunity to meet and associate with people coming from all kinds of places I have been thoroughly refreshed. I am trying not to let my ambitions get the better of me, but just glossing over the clubs and activities boards I saw during orientation almost made my heart skip beats at the sight of people who had similar interest to me and were doing things about it.

3. A New Purpose

I am the kind of person who doesn't just like having things to do, I NEED things to do. Yes, like every teenager I am begging to get out of school because I don't want to be there with the first few weeks of it starting, or I am complaining at work three hours after my shift has started about how I don't want to be there. When summer starts though or I have some kind of long break from work/school I go from hating school to bored out of my mind with not having school in about three minutes. Productivity is a big deal to me and if I am not accomplishing something I feel like I am just a waste of space. I try to keep myself occupied of course with various projects, but there is just something so much more fulfilling when I have deadlines or a grade to make so that I can push myself for it. Since there are so many clubs, sports and activities on campus that I found interesting I honestly don't see how I can get bored when college starts.

4. Opportunities Everywhere

Another thing that I loved during my orientation was meeting with the faculty there. Two people who truly stuck out to me were the Dean of the Student Life office and the Dean of the Business School (I am going for a Marketing Major). I actually spoke privately to both of them and both presented to me opportunities that I would have never thought I would be getting access to so early in College, let alone my orientation. With the Dean of Student Life, the opportunity came when I asked her if the college I am attending had a Creative Writing Club and to my utter surprise she actually knew who I was since I had been the founder of the creative writing club at my high school and made it with the help of a College Professor. She walked me through the steps of how I could actually start a Creative Writing Club for the college and pushed me to attempt to do so when my semester started. When I spoke with the Dean of the Business School I was simply asking him about the prospects of internship and he promptly supplied me links to several local businesses that are open to internships, particularly ones based on writing since I notified him I was an Odyssey writer, that I could look into as my College career continued. All of this presented to me before I have even had my first class! I can not even begin to imagine where my College life is going to take me with all of these opportunities abounding!

5. A Step Towards The Dream

Admittedly, Marketing was not my first choice for what I wanted to do with my life or study when I was first attempting to enter college. I was honestly hoping to go to a different college and attend their Journalism program. When I was not accepted to that college due to my own procrastination on supplying them with documents I felt absolutely crushed. The college I am now attending was just supposed to be a plan B. To my surprise though, I have completely fallen in love with not just the school but what I am now wishing to study. If you haven't been able to tell yet from reading this, I am an extrovert and absolutely love being around people. I really enjoy talking to people and if I am speaking to a large group as long as I am confident in what I am saying I honestly feel more comfortable than speaking to someone one on one. This coupled with the fact that writing is an even bigger passion to me than speaking has actually proven to be perfect for the career I am now looking into, and I am expecting that I will only enjoy it more as my education starts.