I was sitting on my mom's bed in our apartment in Chicago when I got my acceptance email to Boston University. I always thought I would find out I was accepted to college by running down to the mail box every morning and eagerly waiting for the mailman to bring my letter. But, my early 2000's movie dreams for a college acceptance were smashed by the internet (also, the mailman doesn't come to my neighborhood until after 1 p.m., so that should have been my first warning). As soon as I saw that the first word in the email was "Congratulations," I was ecstatic. I could name five people off the top of my head who I knew were going there and I loved the location of the school. But when I continued to read, my mood changed slightly. The letter went on to say that I was accepted into the College of General Studies January Boston London Program. At first, I was really confused. I didn't even know that I had applied to be apart of the program. I even went so far as to go back to my original application on the Common App to see if I did (spoiler alert - I did). I quickly did research on this program and found out that it entailed not starting in Boston until January and then doing a 6 week summer semester in London over the following summer as a replacement for the one I would miss in the fall. After a few days of thinking about it, talking to my parents, friends and college counselors, I submitted my deposit and subsequently decided that I was going to attend BU!
Now, in the beginning, I was very confident in my decision. I proudly wore my BU gear to school every day and even visited Boston over my spring break. But when the fall rolled around and I had to say goodbye to all my friends, I started to question my decision. I had to watch them all make new friends and go out without me and basically start new lives. I felt super left out. I began to think that I made the wrong decision; that I should have gone to one of the other schools I was accepted to where I could've started in the fall. I was still living in that weird place where you know your whole life is about to change but hasn't yet. I quickly realized that staying with my family around where I had gone to high school wasn't a good idea. So I did what any 18 year old would do: I drove my car across the country by myself.
On this drive, I stopped and visited friends at different colleges, took some of my friends for a girls trip to Destin, Fla., temporarily misplaced my car keys about five times, ate a lot of fast food, got a flat tire and got really sick. It was a mess but I don't regret doing it. I'm not sure if I will ever do it again alone but I would do it with friends in a heartbeat. The final destination of my drive was Chicago, and I lived there with my dad for a few weeks. In those weeks, I basically just hung out with him, walked countless miles per day (his favorite activity) and ate dinner at all of my favorite Chicago restaurants. Now I loved spending time with my dad, but I didn't feel productive at all. Even though I was never home, I felt like I was just sitting around and wasting my time.
After deciding I had to spend this semester off doing something with meaning, I started to look into internships. With some help from some family friends, I managed to get an internship at an amazing fashion company in Los Angeles. So for the second time this year, I packed my stuff into my car and moved across the country. I shipped my car and flew this time because I don't know anyone who could handle of 30 hours in the car alone.
The internship is in the marketing department and I really love it. Having spent so much of last year doubting what I wanted to do with my life, it feels good to know that there's something out there that I like to do and that makes a decent amount of money. I have also used this time off to travel. I've been to New York, San Francisco, Sacramento; I went to the world series and my next stop is Hawaii.
I don't want to say, "The moral of the story is," because that sounds so cliche, but the moral of the story is that time off is not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it can get lonely sometimes when all of your friends are getting to experience their firsts of college and you don't even have a housing assignment yet, but you get to do things that they can't. So, thank you BU for my blessing in disguise.
