A Wonderful Beginning
When you start college, it can be easy to lose track of why you went there and what you’re really there for. Starting in college across the country, either I lost sight of that for a little while, or the reasons I went cross country weren’t the right ones. I was a freshman at Occidental, who was going to be a Political Science major in pursuit of a Law degree down the line because a law degree, even if I didn’t want to be a practicing lawyer, would be good graduate degree to have.
It made sense on paper and when I answered my family and other adults with what I’d be doing at college. I thought it made sense to me. The problem was, I didn’t give half a damn about politics. I found it difficult to care about an American political system whose rules, classifications and structures to me either seemed impractical, ineffective or, at their best, woefully inefficient. Unlike the twenty some other students in my politics 101 class, I simply didn’t care, and simply didn’t see the point in caring.
Fast Times
So, my grades suffered, because not caring about the most basic class of the course of study I had convinced myself would be my major made me not care about all my other classes. I drank hard on weekends, slept through most of my classes, and decided I’d enjoy what I could out of college, which was drinking and friends and, as it turns out, that isn’t a whole lot. I was placed on academic probation for my second semester at Occidental, and when I was packing my bags to head back east, I found myself wondering if it would really be such a bad thing not to have to pack to come back out west again.
Over vacation at home though, with my mother asking me about grades and the college experience, I felt conflict eating at me inside. The school I had so nonchalantly left seemed to be calling me as a haven to return to. I didn’t get it, so I wrote a story to try to sort myself out. It was a simple little thing about how when I got the letter of expulsion in five months, I’d run away form home. Cheesy, I know, but it’s how I felt. If I didn’t have college I didn’t want to face my mom and family.
A Time to Reflect
The story ballooned as my character (myself) bounced around the country visiting friends, and, eventually, visiting the college he’d been expelled from. The character would party with his friends but feel empty knowing he’d been expelled and flee again. It was at that point in the writing, when I saw that if I got kicked out of Occidental, I’d yearn to come back and be heartbroken that I’d be there and it still wouldn’t be mine even if I could have my friends. It was then I realized that college was more than that.
There was a turn around next semester when I got back, firstly because I didn’t want the shame of flunking out of college primarily. There was pride motivating me from the start. More than simply scraping by though, I began to find other things. First, a major that I cared about. I became and English Lit Major and began writing for the school newspaper. For a while, I avoided being social, thinking it had been a plague that had ruined me before, but after a month of hiding, I found myself going out on weekends and enjoying myself again. Why? Because the times you have at college are an organic composition of all the things you do. The parties on the weekends are incredible because of the work you face throughout the week. The friends you make are friends you make while you’re intensely studying things you’re passionate about and working for clubs and other organizations on the campus.
To Return with Meaning
To lose the institution is to lose that which made my friends special to me, that bond we shared. To lose my friends would have done the same to the institution I feel. It’s in learning this, recognizing how much Occidental meant to me that I was able to come back, pull myself out of the pit my GPA was in, and rejoin the community as a passionate and contributing member in aspects both social and academic.
I hope anyone going to college henceforth can recognize that you find your passions and life in all areas of its life, and that college means as much to you as you put into these different areas, social, academic, and extracurricular. I know anyone with the open mind to find something in all these areas to enjoy will walk away from their four years with their only regret being that they didn’t have more time. I’ll let you in on one more secret though: that’s what makes college special, that from the moment you go through orientation, you only have it for those days. Make the most kids.