Transitioning from high school to college has not been easy, but every word I read and every tear I cry makes me realize that I am that much closer to my dreams. There are many things I wish I would have known before coming to Milligan, but I narrowed it down to these six:
- Spending time with your family is important. I know this may not be the coolest thing to do as a growing adult, but a part of me wishes I would have savored the times I got to cook with my mom, drive around with my brother and watch the Nationals game with my grandma.
- Sutton Hill is going to be a blessing and a curse. I have found that walking down the hill isn’t as bad as up, and having to come back up in the hot afternoon sun has to be the definition of tiresome. I want to burn off all those Caf calories so all I have to do to do that is walk up and down the hill twice. But, at nine in the morning, I dread having to get out of bed and walk Sutton Hill.
- Cafeteria food can make you or break you. I love the fact that we have a variety of choices like: the pasta bar, Greek bar, salad bar, pizza bar and specialty bar, but I wish there were healthier options to choose from. I slowly feel myself gaining the “freshman 15” because I choose to eat a bowl of ice cream with every meal since nothing else seems to satisfy my appetite. I understand that the food isn’t going to be heavenly like momma’s cookin’, but the chicken noodle soup hits pretty close to home.
- Friday nights feel naked without football. The constant battle of trying to figure out what to do on a Friday night seems to be one of the biggest problems I have faced in college. Friday nights in high school were under the lights cheering on the football team, but here I feel like Friday nights are spent driving around and spending money on Cookout milkshakes. There is always ETSU to drive to, to watch a football game, but is it really fun to cheer on a team that isn’t made up of people you sit by in class?
- Studying is a must. I took my first Humanities exam a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t do awful, but I know I could have done better. I have found that to do well on a test, studying is not an option. In high school, you could easily make it without reading a lick of a book, but in college you need to read word for word and take notes.
- Cleaning weekly is no longer Mom’s duty. Sharing a room with another person may not seem like a big deal, but it starts to become one when one has to clean. I notice that girls are just as messy as boys, if not messier. I find myself vacuuming globs of hair out of the carpet, scrubbing the sink hoping to get the rust out and taking out the trash at least twice a week. At home it was easy to let your room get messy because your mom would probably end up cleaning it or yelling at you to clean it. In college, you don’t have your mother breathing down your neck telling you to clean, but you can have an angry roommate telling you that you are a slob.
I know it may seem like there are a lot of negative things about my experience so far with Milligan, but Milligan feeds me physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. I wish I would have known some of these things before I came, so I could have prepared myself for the realities one faces when being on your own
