College. College is a place where we go to “find ourselves” and become the person we want to be. There comes a time in what seems to be a long four years of college, in my case, five years, and for some even seven years where we sit back and think “oh crap, what’s next." We’ve all had those nights where we take too many shots of the cheap liquor from Red Raider Liquor because we’re afraid of what is to come while we’re burning our college textbooks from Varsity because we’re finally done.
Where you choose to go to college will form you into well, you. I chose to attend Texas Tech, a campus where everyone bleeds red and black. Whether you’re a little boy in the stands at Jones AT&T Stadium or an old lady at J&B coffee, we all have our guns up all day, every day. Nothing gives me more chills on my spine than walking past a stranger and hearing “Wreck ‘Em!" Tech is a land where everyone is proud and also a place that where people can shotgun a beer better than anyone else. (If you don’t believe me, I would like to see you challenge us). When the sun goes down and our guns are still up, we are all have one thing in common, being a Red Raider.
Texas Tech is a family like no other. You can call anyone in town if you’re out of gas and they’ll come fill your tank up and then take you to Spanky’s for some cheese sticks. If you forgot a scantron for your test at least five students will offer you one of theirs even if you haven’t met them before. My favorite part of being a Red Raider is if you are back home for the weekend and see someone with a Tech shirt on you both automatically smile and put your guns up. If that is not family, I don’t know what is. Texas Tech has an overall friendly culture. I’ve made some of my closet friends in the library. I remember nights where I would be sitting there at 2 AM and so would another kid procrastinating just like I was. Next thing you know we would talk about how we were going to drop out of college together. Luckily we didn’t.
What people don’t tell you about college is how stressful your final semester truly is. You look back on your college career and you think to yourself if there is anything you should have done different or if you made any mistakes. First off, if you attended Texas Tech you made no mistake. But, if you attended A&M or UT sorry, you already made a huge mistake. What people also don’t tell you is how many things you must juggle that last semester. We all get depressed with the goodbyes to friends that we’ve made good and embarrassing memories with. We also look at our bank accounts and realize we have $7.43 left to our names and think how the heck we are supposed to start our lives on that but we spend $6.50 on that Chimy’s margarita that we just had to have and now have $.93 to our name.
The most important emotion we juggle that last semester is accepting that we finally made it to the end. We actually did it and survived. We survived that night we had too many drinks on Broadway. We survived our very first hangover even though we thought we were going to die. We got over the D that one professor gave us on that paper that was so good in our eyes that it could have been published. Somehow we made it out of Conference alive and told our friends we would never go back but found ourselves in line the next weekend. We ran away ashamed after walking on the grass at Memorial Circle after being yelled at by a senior then yelled at a freshman a year later for doing the same thing. We survived the college party in Tech Terrace where we saw a lot of illegal activity for the first time. We survived staying up all night studying for a test on stacks five that we still failed. But most importantly, we survived college together. By together I mean Texas Tech. I am proud to always call Texas Tech my home with my guns always up.
Wreck ‘Em forever.
