I’ve never known life without a college campus. Growing up, my dad is a professor so my family moved around the country from college to college. They have never intimidated me, my mom worked in admissions and my many snow days in Roanoke were spend in the back of my dad’s classroom -- lit by the overhead he was showing transparencies on. Maybe this is the reason I decided to go so far from home for school, because for me, it never felt like I left home at all.
I’ve lived in Michigan for the most recent (almost) decade of my life but I chose to go to Lafayette College -- a small, elite, fairly uniform, northeastern institution for higher ed. A far cry from the Midwest charm I am use to. My high school has roughly a 50-percent graduation rate, is extremely socioeconomically and racially diverse. Many of my friends from high school are married, engaged, pregnant, have children, or some combination of the above. Many never went to college and those that did typically went within the two hour radius, max. I don’t mean this negatively but I did know that it was not for me; I chose just about the furthest thing from what I was used to.
In late August I came to campus having only minimally talked to my roommate (she was in China for the summer so communication was few and far between) and knew only one other person on the whole campus, who happened to be my boyfriend, not such a great choice. The first few weeks were hard -- I missed my mom and dad, I missed having my own room, I missed my dog, my boyfriend and I broke up. But I have to say that in missing all of these things I found myself.
My freshman year of college I truly learned how to be independent; how to make mistakes and learn from them. I learned what it was like to mess up and not have anyone to help you fix it; to have to deal with the consequences yourself. I learned what it was like to make friends and lose friends faster than I could ever imagine. For the first time, I was around a high concentration of people who were much, much, more intelligent than me in an academic sense. I found out what it is like to truly be alone and I found what a true friend is.
Those first few months were the best and worst months of my life; when the going got tough I couldn’t just go home for the weekend. Without going to school nine hours from home, I would never have learned so many things about people in general, but more importantly, I would have never learned so much about myself. Going to school far from home was one of the best decisions I could have ever made for myself, and even though I still miss my family, and having my own room, and I miss my dog, I’m a much stronger person for it, and I’ve found my forever home at Laf.
