Not everyone ends up at their high school “dream college.” Whether by undesirable application results or insufficient financial aid, it’s not always possible to wind up where you really wanted to be.
Or at least where you thought you really wanted to be.
My top two college choices were in New York. I loved their urban location, their respective programs for my major, their facilities, the whole package. But if anyone asked me at this very moment if I wanted to leave Oxford, I would vehemently shake my head no. Any doubts, reservations, or hesitations I had about making my initial deposit at Miami University are a distant, forgotten memory. How does a change like this happen?
The answer didn’t hit me until about the second or third day of school. I was sitting in my neighbors’ room with a bunch of people from my hall. Someone was playing the ukulele and we had a two-hour impromptu singalong. Sitting in this room with a group of people I’d just met while belting out Twenty One Pilots, I realized something: I didn’t just find a college. I found a home.
Academics and opportunities are definitely of paramount importance when selecting a college. Yet a four-year educational, social, and professional experience isn’t just a two-piece puzzle. There is no such thing as “settling” for a college. Whether it’s an Ivy League, state university or local community college, if you put in the necessary work and effort, you’ll graduate with a degree. What should bring you the most happiness isn’t the name or prestige of the university, whether or not it was your dream college during your high school years, or the number of friends you had heading into your first day.
College isn’t only about late night study sessions, 5 p.m. classes, microwave entrees, and stressing about how to get everything done. When you look back on the glory of the college years, that’s not all that you want to remember. You want to remember ordering Insomnia Cookies at 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night with your neighbors. You want to remember learning how to ice skate with your roommate and the awful bruise that resulted. You want to remember loud parties and rambunctious rivalry games. You want to remember staying up until 3 a.m. watching movies and YouTube videos in the basement. All of the things you can’t frame with your diploma.
For my first full week at Miami, I referred to the place where I slept and made coffee as my dorm. Now I’m headed into my third week and I call it home. Maybe home is where the heart is, or maybe it’s where you keep your Ramen. Either way, it feels like I’m slowly wriggling into this little niche of 'The Place I’m Supposed To Be.'
So maybe the question you should ask yourself isn’t if you picked the right college--Perhaps the better question is if you’ve found a place you could learn to call home.
