This time last year, I was stressing out about where I would be going to college. The deposit was due on May 1st, and I had absolutely no idea what I wanted. I made the mistake of applying to 13 schools, while paying no attention to price. I had no idea whether I wanted to go far from home, or stay close by, so I just decided to apply to basically every school in the world. I ended up getting denied from 2, wait listed from 2, and accepted to 9 schools. Those 9 schools ranged in location from North Carolina, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New York, and pretty much everywhere in between. The thing that narrowed it down for me was the fact that I couldn't afford to visit most of them, never mind pay for tuition and still get to come home for Christmas. The one school that I didn't apply to was UMass, Lowell, because there was no way I would want to be going to college 20 minutes from my house.
This was my time to get away, to be independent, and to meet new people that didn't know everything about me. I ended up choosing University of New Hampshire, which was a comfortable hour and a half away from home. I got there, set up my room, met my 2 roommates, and tried to settle in. Everything was good. My room was comfortable enough, my roommates were great, and I had already started making a group of friends. Even though there was nothing that I openly didn't like, I felt off. It could have been the fact that I had taken out over $30,000 in loans for the first year alone, or the fact that I was away from my family for the first extended period of time ever, it could've been the fact that my boyfriend was now 4 hours away from me at UMaine, or just the fact that I didn't know one single person. In that moment, I would've killed to have an old friend living down the hall. Everything that I thought I had wanted didn't seem so great anymore.
Everyone told me that it would take time to settle in, that it was a big adjustment, and that in a few weeks I would love it. I know that may have been true, but at that time, all I could think about was how I was paying over $30,000 for something that I may possibly end up hating. I made the decision to leave school after only the first week. Everyone was supportive, but I could tell that they all thought I was crazy. How could I have not even given it a chance? The first few months were really tough for me. Once I got home, I had the feeling that I had made a terrible mistake. I had to keep telling everyone I saw about what happened, and keep reliving the thing that I was so ashamed of. I had quit my job before I left, and now I had to go crawling back, yet again, explaining my failure to everyone who asked. The other thing that was extremely hard for me was that all of my friends were away at school, so when I got home I was just as separated from them as when I was at UNH.
In October, I got a new job, and things were looking up. I applied to UMass Lowell (i know, ironic), and was accepted for the spring semester. While I was now content with my decision, I still worried about how my year was going to go. I spent at least two hours trying to decide what my new Facebook photo album would be called, if you can believe it. Everyone had their "Freshman Year", "College Life", etc. albums, even I had my "UNH 2014" album, complete with it's 5 photos.What was I supposed to call this one? How about "I Fucked Up & Made The Wrong Decision", or "Babysitting 2014"? I finally settled on a quote by John Lennon; I saw it as fitting. "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans", and guess what, its actually filled with photos from amazing adventures that I still managed to have even though I didn't live at school. I worked until the spring, and saved up enough to almost pay off the whole
semester. I worked hard, and got great grades throughout the whole
semester in addition to working. This week, I am studying for my first
set of college finals. I am dreading them, but I am looking forward to
all of my friends coming home for the summer.
Although this wasn't the freshman year that I had planned for myself, I don't think it could have turned out any better. I made new friends at work, I saved money, I spent a lot of time with my family, I kept up my grades, and now I have a great summer to look forward to. I realized that I had to stop comparing everything to what I thought should have been happening at this certain point in my life, and just focus on what I could do and be happy with that. I will leave you with one more quote that inspired me to get over it and just live with the decisions I had made...
"You don't have to have it all figured out to move forward".
Thanks for reading,
-Grace :)
