With over 40,000 kids at UW-Madison, it can feel like the world is just happening and you’re swimming against the current trying to get through your days. It’s important to find ways to make a big school feel small. Whether it be a large or tiny gesture, something should be said about those things that just make you feel like the world around you isn’t so daunting and intimidating. Coming from a school with about 1200 kids total and only 76 including myself in my graduating class, I always felt like my bubble was so perfect and familiar, and not frightening at all. After looking at all the recognizable faces standing next to me on the graduation stage, I realized that it was the last time I would know every single person in my class’ first and last name, family size, and favorite lunch menu. It was the last time my world would be deemed familiar and constant, a world that I fit right into at all times. I always took my tight knit community for granted, never anticipating the environment I would soon be jumping into, face first.

My first day of college was so cliche, my face turns to bright red even thinking about it. I was the only one who wasn’t being spoken to in line while waiting for the key to my dorm. All the girls who I saw acted like they had been best friends for years and decided to take on college together. My sister whispered into my ear, “do those girls know each other already?”, I was confused as well, as I soon realized I was moving in as the only girl who didn’t come to school with a camp or school friend. I met my roommate on move in day, along with everything and everyone else that I would soon become acquainted with. I was the stereotypical outcast, the girl from Miami who never went to sleep away camp and was about to experience her first winter. I had never felt so small. I was now stationed in this new and vast foreign world. I walked outside my dorm building onto the street to find the thousands of people running in and out of restaurants and stores just going on with their day. I realized I was not going to know the people around me at all times and I was going to have to get comfortable with that fact.

As the days quickly swept by, It was important for me to learn the names and faces of the people who lived on my floor and of the people I saw on a day to day basis. I eventually made my way through out the entire building, asking people where they are from and learning things about each and every one of them. I began to form acquaintances and “hello’s." Faces became more familiar and I was becoming okay with the feeling of being placed into a world that tested my people skills and shook me up a bit. I lived my whole life being comfortable everywhere I ever stepped into, so I decided to take on the challenge of making my new world less intimidating.

Leaving such a familiar environment and entering one that is completely foreign may seem scary and unappealing at first, but it builds character and most definitely challenges the person that you are. I’m lucky to have left the bubble that I had grown up in. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.