The Mountain Climb

Wow, the first week of school! I love this time of the year! Catching up with friends you haven’t seen since last spring and catching up with professors is probably the best thing about college. I wish I could explain the feeling, but it’s none other. Campus is bustling with events for everybody and people getting lost. (I love the freshmen daze!)

Honestly, there’s a part of me where I wish I was on summer vacation back in Tulsa, but reality kicked in the past couple of days where this is it. This is what I’ve dreamed about since I was in elementary school: my college senior year. It’s an exciting, humbling, and fearful experience. The changes of faces through the years can be overwhelming. Some are with excitement due to them crossing the stage and starting new, great endeavors in their life. I take pride and feel honored to have them as friends. They inspire me to keep going. In fact, they encourage me to enjoy every waking moment of this last year because I’ve heard it over and over again, “I miss those college days.” While on the other hand, I often think about those who miss the college days for those who didn’t or won’t finish with me due to a thing called life. You know it’s funny. I watched a lot of the Cosby Show growing up and in one of the episodes where Theo goes to college; they gave some of the best advice for college freshmen. “Look to your left. Look to your right. These people will not be here when you graduate.” I didn’t know it would take such an emotional toll on me like it did, but it did. It’s the other side of the motivating factor that keeps me going. Those people would do almost anything to get to where I’m at and sometimes I forget that. It’s an honor and a privilege to be a college student. Hopefully our politicians and constituents will notice that come November 4th!

It’s scary though. Once you go through you’re senior year in high school, you feel like the big person on campus and develop senioritis. I went through that. I learned and benefited from it. Now, I’m seeing it from a new perspective. Over the break, I had the opportunity to really sit back and see the areas that I hadn’t given back. There was a day when I walked on UNC’s campus nearly 4 years ago, on August 23, 2004, and two great people took me under their wings. Through them, I was able to learn the ins and outs of the campus, the inner workings, and met about 60% of the campus in just one semester. I felt scared honestly and inferior. What in the world could they possibly see in me to want to hang out with a freshman? What could I give to this school when I’m still learning my way? Honesty. I was scared and had to vocalize it in order for it to go away. My family taught me a phrase that has come down through generations, mainly to answer to the size of our family, but it’s true for so many other reasons. “A closed mouth doesn’t get fed.” It’s ok to be scared sometimes. It’s natural, especially when it’s a new and foreign territory. I promise you, you’re not the only one. You’re probably sitting next to them in class or living next door to them in the residence halls. Use the opportunities that have been given to us like all the Welcome Week activities. The difference between high school and college is simply you determine your destiny. It’s all up to you.