When I was trying to decide where to go to school, nowhere felt like it was calling me, nowhere felt like home. So I picked the school that had the academic programs I was interested in. I picked a school close enough to home that I could still see my high school boyfriend, (although that was probably the worst thing I could have done). I needed this place to feel like home. I joined clubs, made friends, joined a sorority and I started to get settled in. And when my high school boyfriend and I broke up, and I was struggling with school, struggling to make friends and keep friends, I began to question why I had chosen to come to school here and if I wanted to stay.
I didn’t want to go back after christmas break, it was almost as bad as leaving the first time. I cried and was as homesick as ever. I was so homesick that I came home one weekend in February, and for anyone who knows me, I never went home except for breaks. I cried when I left to go back when the weekend came to an end. My mom didn’t understand why I was unhappy. She suggest I switch schools for the fall and stay at home. But I had signed a lease for the fall and didn’t want to leave my sorority, I wasn’t ready to give up. I didn’t want to leave behind this new life I had begun to build.
As the semester went on, I was just trying to find my place. I made new friends and went outside my comfort zone at times to reach out to new people. I met a boy, made a best friend and finally began to feel like I had found my place, just in time for summer break.
Over the summer, I was questioning my major and was dreading my classes I was enrolled for the fall but was excited to go back and see my friends and sisters. I realized I needed to find new reasons to love the school I had chosen to call home. I reconnected with friends and sorority sisters, tried to focus on my class. I was still unhappy with my major and classes and that was the source of all my stress and made me hate this school I was trying so hard to love.
I decided to take action. I needed to reach out to someone, I needed support. I reached out to sorority sisters, spend more time doing homework in my living room with my roommates instead of locked away in my room, and decided to meet with my advisor about my plans for the future.
“So tell me about this pre-dental plan” is the first thing she said to me when I sat down in her office. I just kind of laughed and told her I just picked something. I explained how there was nothing I felt passionate about when high school ended so I just picked something, but now I hate all my classes and I’m questioning what I want to do.
“I just feel like I have set myself to this standard, I said I was going to go to dental school and become an orthodontist so now I have to but I am miserable.”
“So do you wanna give it a good ole college try?”
I look at her kinda choked up, upset with how I have held this in.
“I’m just kinda done…”
“Alright well we will just delete all the chemistry and biology courses from your plan and change your concentration to health administration… how does that make you feel?”
“Relieved.”
I ended up adding a communication minor that day too. And after that, although school is still difficult and the future is unclear, I am relieved with the fact that I don’t have it all planned out. I am a health science major with communication and business minors, and what I plan to do with that, I have no idea yet. There is no plan laid out for me and there is no standard or expectation I am being held to, and that make it easier for me enjoy my college experience. I am learning to love the school I had begun to hate. I am falling back in love with the school I had decided to call home.
