College - A time where we mainly want to go to school with new found friends and go through Fraternity/Sorority recruitment if you choose, or stay how you are. We also go to chase athletic dreams, or like my school, Equestrian dreams, and look to achieve a degree in our own field. But a huge thing the majority of us experience is the new relationships we make and the parties and 'going out' on the regular in order to feel horrible the next day. We do this a lot, and this is dramatized a lot on movies and TV shows like 'Blue Mountain State'. Sometimes a lot of us, and I hold my hands up for this, forget what we truly are in school for. I've found myself rocking into my Freshman dorm at 3am having to get up at 8am for a Biology class and I am not the only person to do this. This happens for a long time in college and for other people this is their 'ideal' college. Although it is a luxury there comes a time when we have to really mature and grow up and I can now tell you of this happening to me as I write this.
As I sit at my summer job I think about the last two years I have had in college and think of decisions I have made and things I have done and realized some have helped me significantly and some have hindered me in some ways. I love college, I will not lie to you about that, but the time I have been there I have had a lot of moments where I have thought about life. Right now I am going through the maturing stage that I am writing to you about. I used to be the first to say "Yes, I'm going out tonight" and saying that three nights in a row, knowing I will be waking up the next day feeling terrible and regretting what I may or may not have done the night before. But this all come to me, finally, this summer. I looked at myself and thought about how I need to get into shape because in a bad way college affected me athletically. One injury and no change of the drinking lifestyle and I lost anything I had got before. Thinking of this made me think about the future and how the binge drinking in college could affect you in the long run. Because of this, at this moment, I am very reluctant to drink.
Although this I coming from someone who has drunk a lot, I urge every reader to try and contemplate the decision I have thrown upon myself. This summer I know I will be invited to go and drink on days off, but I now understand the concept of missing a workout one day to go drink that night can hinder a lot of progress, and I do not want that. I want my time to be relaxed, when I can rest I will rest.
Because of my first two years at college I know I have a positive mindset going into my junior year that I want to be more grown up and settled. When I say settled I don't mean I want to be married, or have kids and live in my own place, but I want to keep what I do on the down low and be a little quieter instead of building reputations which can be spread like Chinese whispers. I now know, after a slow start to college academically, I want to better myself and know what I do now can really affect me for the rest of my life.
So after this I hope some of you college Girls and Guys can be inspired in some way by this, and those about to be heading into college can learn from my mistakes in order for you to not do them. So to finish, I will leave you with this quote by Joshua L. Liebman. "Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values."
