On August 25, 2014, I walked onto St. Vincent campus for the first time as a student. I had been here many times before, but this day was different; I couldn’t hide my grin or the butterflies fluttering their little hearts out inside my stomach. It was finally here. My first day of college. My first real day of school. Ever.
You see, I wasn’t exactly what you would call a “traditional student.” I had learned my ABCs, my 123s, had gone through the dreaded middle school phase, and had done my fair share of studying, cramming, procrastinating and working late into the night to finish assignments. All the normal stuff; except one thing: I had done it all at home. Yes, I was a homeschooler – A word that has only recently been deemed by Microsoft Word as legitimate.
Normally, when you picture a girl’s first day of school, a generic image probably pops into your head: A young girl, hair in pigtails, sporting a brand new dress and a giant grin, toting a back pack just about as big as she is that’s most likely pink and covered with puppies or ponies. You don’t, however, normally think of an 18-year-old. But for me, that was exactly the case.
As a homeschooler, everything, and I mean everything, had the potential for education. We could go outside to take care of the animals or drive into town to run errands, and somehow it would turn into a science/history/geography lesson, and eventually an English lesson, all rolled into one. (Ask any homeschooler, and they will tell you that the classic phrase after any educational excursion was: “Write about it.”) Even in the summer. Also, because I have two brothers five and twelve years my seniors, I was observing or participating in school projects long before I was actually “in school.” To be entirely honest, I can’t quite remember when I actually began school. There was never the day where school officially started for me; it just always was.
Like I said before, I had been on campus many times prior to enrolling. Aside from tours and meetings, I had also attended the Step-Up program on campus, a type of extra credit program for homeschool students, from middle school through my senior year of high school. I can’t remember how many of those classes I had taken, but I do know that some of my best memories had already been made in the halls of St. Vincent, which makes them even more near and dear to my heart.
On the first day of class I walked in once more to a room I had sat in and walked by countless times: Alfred 31. But this day it was different; I walked in not as a homeschooled high school student, but as a college student, and seated around me were other college students. The teacher was not an education major doing pre-student teaching, but a professor. I was not there for an extra credit class my friends and I had decided to take together; I was there to take a college level course. The class room I thought I had known felt familiar yet entirely different at the same time. It now offered something more substantial and serious than a temporary class, almost a sense of permanence; it was the real deal this time. Two months earlier that very sense of permanence frightened me.
Over a short period of time that spring I had gone from enrolling at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, for baking and pastry arts to enrolling at St. Vincent College for Middle Grade Education. It was somewhat of a whirlwind the way it all happened, but in the end I was pleased with my choice. However, things started to creep in. I still had no clue what I wanted to do with my life and I wasn’t even sure if I truly wanted to teach in a class room. I was worried I had made the wrong choice with education, because it had been on a total whim when I checked the "Middle Grade Education" box on my application. There were days when I dreaded anyone asking what college I had decided on or what I was planning to do. I began to be worried that I would be stuck career wise. I had heard stories of people going through all four years of college, realizing that they didn’t want to do or didn’t love what they were doing, and ending up stuck with careers they didn’t want. I had also heard of people coming out of school who were now working in fields almost entirely unrelated to their degree. I saw people with passion for what they were doing, and I saw people with the exact opposite. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen for me and I was nervous, confused, anxious and apprehensive.
After much prayerful consideration and conversations with family, friends, students and faculty, I had a revelation: College is not to be the sealing of my fate. It is the means by which I will do the work that God has given me to accomplish. It is a place where I will see doors open, make connections, and further my knowledge – All to help me fulfill my purpose and complete my task. I don’t know what will happen, and that’s okay.
I can’t imagine what my first day of class would have been like if I hadn’t come to that conclusion and gotten that feeling of peace. But thankfully I had because after my first day I went home and told my family all about it like a true giddy school girl. Two years in an I still feel the same way. I have met so many wonderful, new people, joined clubs and participated in other activities. Granted, it has been extremely stressful and at times overwhelming, and I’ve had to work to stay organized and on top of things; but I could be having the worst day possible or be swamped with homework, and if someone asks me how school is going or how I am enjoying the college life, I can’t wipe the grin off my face.
Even over this short period of time, that feeling of dreaded permanence has altered; it’s no longer a feeling of being permanently stuck, but rather a feeling of being someplace that will be permanently home: My new “home” school.
