Today I decided to take a walk around the University of Puget Sound campus. It has been a while since I’ve truly taken in the campus and appreciated it. I wanted to remember the beauty I saw the first time I visited, and remember what made me pick UPS.

It’s been two weeks since classes started, and before I came back to school I wasn’t sure if I was excited for it, dreading it, or completely apathetic.

I started my first year at school so extremely excited for it. There was definitely some doubt there about whether or not I had picked the right school, but overall it had taken over my life and I was so excited for the new chapter. I thought my first year would be perfect: I would make friends, and they would be perfect. Sometimes we would go to parties, sometimes we would stay in and watch movies, and sometimes we would go for long walks. Maybe we would go to Seattle and do something amazing there, but most of the time we would make the most of Tacoma.

My first year was not all that I had made it out to be, though. It wasn’t terrible. I had made friends and we did do all the things I had hoped. But I ended up feeling self-conscious and disappointed most of the time. College was so different from every year before it. I spent far too many hours sitting in my room waiting 15 seconds until the next episode on Netflix started, knowing that my roommate was out doing something while I was stuck doing nothing.

That left me feeling completely miserable when I came back for sophomore year. I broke down in the Target parking lot because I was so scared that I was just going to face a repeat of my first year. Two weeks in, though, I had already realized that sophomore year was something totally new. I didn’t realize that at the end of my first year, I had made so many long-lasting friends. Sophomore year had its downs, but it certainly had its ups too.

So when I started school this year, I realized that I had no idea what to expect. The first two years felt like such different experiences. But even setting foot back on campus made me remember that coming to this school changed my life so much, and there is so many reasons I was going to look forward to my junior year.

Despite having hours alone inside my room my freshman year, I pushed myself harder than I ever had. I picked a school far away from home so that I wouldn’t be able to fall back on my parents when times got rough. I forced myself to rely on myself and to trust that I could get through my problems on my own.

I wanted to make friends. I wanted to embrace my ambitions. And though I hadn’t realized it, those were things I had never done before.

I had the same friends for most of my life, and I never really had to make new ones until college. And in terms of ambitions, even though I certainly had them, I never trusted myself to be able to do anything with them. I didn’t believe I actually had abilities in the areas that I loved, like theatre and writing.

But UPS has taught me that there is merit in what I want to do and that I just might have the abilities to make it there. My freshman year, I truly involved myself in theatre like I had never done before. I took two classes on theatre, and I auditioned and got onto the improv team.

It was hard to realize it as it was happening, but UPS truly did change my life. When I picked this school, I thought that was just a silly line that got people to pick the school. That was at first, but in practice, I don’t think I would have changed so much at any other school. The professors here encourage you to take risks and to believe in your instincts, which was something I had never really thought to do before.

Walking around campus reminded me how much I have changed since my very first visit to the University of Puget Sound. I used to be so worried about myself, to the point where I would never truly audition for a show. I would never have believed enough in what I was doing to get anywhere.

I took a route that used to walk my freshman year when I needed to get out of my room but I just needed to be alone. The world looked the same as it did then, but I was different. I am no longer the person who is shattered by their own self-consciousness. I am no longer so far deep inside my shell that I forgot what the outside looked like. I am not quite to where I want to be, but I am finally on the road to get there.