You never know until . . . it's staring you right in the face.

This happened to me a few weeks ago when I made the transition to college life. Yes, that means I'm a freshman. Well, what I never knew before I came to college was how detail oriented I was.

I mean, I always tried keeping my room clean. The key word there is tried. Everything had a place and everything was in its place, even if it did take a while for peoples' eyes to adjust. I called it "organized clutter" (for lack of better words). But I never considered myself to be a neat freak.

Boy, was I wrong.

So it was the day of move in and I finally got the key to my room. Volunteers helped bring in the whole car load of stuff: believe me I don't know how my dad fit everything into one vehicle. After that, it was time to get to work.

We started off by making the bed and it took me forever just to figure out how I wanted my pillows displayed . . . talk about detail oriented.

Then I put my mom on clothing duty, folding and putting away shirts. I got my dad to move all the heavy furniture to where I wanted it. I only made him move the desk maybe a couple hundred times. Then, of course, me and my not-so-detail-oriented-self started rearranging the little nick-nacks I had brought from home to make my desk look all pretty. Again, everything had a place and everything was in its place.

Lucky for me, I was able to move in a day before my roommate. I can only imagine how chaotic it would have been to have two of everything and twice as many people in the room.

When my roommate got there the next day, I was able to help her unpack. She was almost done with everything except she had one more thing to hang up on the wall. When she set the wooden frame on the hook, her mom told her it was crooked. My roommate just shrugged her shoulders and moved on to the next thing on her list. I didn't say anything.

Later that day, when my roommate and her mom were out running errands, I went over to the frame and straightened it: and at that moment I knew.

The truth is, we never know our true ticks until we are put in an environment that forces us to become who we really are . . .

As for me? Nothing can be on the sink counter, my sweaters have to be put back on hangers, my laptop has to be in my backpack when I'm not using it, and I have to wash my hands a few thousand times a day.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm a little germaphobic? That's also something new I found out.