In just five weeks, I will be graduating college. After moving away from my hometown, I came to IUPUI terrified but ready for a new beginning. Honestly, between my loathing feelings for school and all around disinterest in almost everything, I never thought I would have made it to college let alone all four years. In fact, college was not what I had in mind for myself post-high school graduation. I wanted to take a year off, travel the world and experience life because by the time graduate I’ll be too “old.” However, my parents didn’t give me much choice and encouraged me to apply to IUPUI.
Turns out IUPUI was the only school I was accepted to because it was the only school I applied to. Once I got my acceptance letter, I figured why waste my time applying to other schools I’ll probably drop out of in a year. The preparation just to get accepted to one school was so exhausting that the stress of higher education was already getting to me before it even began.
Looking back now I want to laugh at my eighteen-year old self. Really, what would I have done? Sure I could have traveled but it would have been a disaster. At the time I had no real skills, no sense of direction (which I still don’t have) and only a few years of bad French under my belt. I had also seen “Taken” one too many times to make me paranoid. It was the definition of a pipe dream. So, Mom and Dad, thank you for not giving me any other choice besides the best choice.
It sounds cliché and to some maybe a little pathetic, but these last four years have been the best four years of my life so far.
A few days ago I was looking through my instagram feed (don’t judge me like you don’t creep on your own account) and realized exactly how many amazing memories I have made. Every single frat party and hang out at the Avenue or 1201. $2 Tuesdays at the Stacked Pickle or walking home at midnight on the canal. And bringing meaning to the quote “here’s to the nights we won’t remember to the people we’ll never forget.”
I learned what it really means to be a friend. I have created such strong genuine bonds with people here I never would have gotten the chance to know. It’s almost weird, you know, to think just four years ago I had no idea my friends existed and they didn’t know I did. I thought I met everyone already that would ever really matter to me. Today there is such a mentality to keep your circle small but fuck that. If I’ve learned anything it’s to let others in regardless of the risk.
A comment I get a lot is “oh they’re your best friend too? You have so many ‘best friends.’” Yes. Yes, I do. I finally realized my friends from home weren’t always going to be around, thank God they still are though, and I would have to branch out sooner or later. Closing myself off, being heartless- it became too much work.
Loneliness is an extremely taxing feeling and makes being alone with yourself ten times harder. So I opened myself up and forged genuine bonds with people around me. People who I know for a fact I never would have been friends with high school.
Some of those bonds have been strengthened and some have weakened. Some were completely broken and never reformed while others were. Yes, I have more best friends than I can count on one hand because I realized I’m not actually heartless. I love listening and learning about people and caring about them and feeling it in return.
And through all these amazing memories and amazing people, I’ve been tossed challenges I never thought I would be able to handle or get through. I went from being okay to not okay back to sort of alright to ultimate rock bottom, and now I’m working my way back up.
If it weren’t for this school with these friends, my demise would have come much faster and much harder. But every moment spent here, whether with other people or by myself, led to a gradual fall from grace that I thankfully have been able to pick myself up from.
So now, sitting on my couch with one of my best friends from high school, in the apartment I share with my first and one of my best friends from college, I still have no idea what the hell I’m doing or where I’m going and I’m still figuring out who I am. But because of college, because of my time here at IUPUI, I am 100% okay with that.
I’m sad and terrified to end this chapter in my life that I have put so much of myself into, but despite my fear I am ready for the next thing life has to offer.
