By Jessica Hickerson
A writer by the name of Isaac Asimov once said, “The true delight is in the finding out; rather than the knowing.” However, in finding out, we undergo the largest and most difficult journey of our lives: a journey that doesn’t ever seem to end and grows more difficult with each accomplishment and milestone we endure.
The accomplishment of high school graduation that I endured this year closed one of the most important chapters of my life… only to open another. A new door has opened for me; one door that has already filled me with anxiety, excitement, satisfaction, and a little bit of fear. Fear of being a freshman again, not knowing where I’m going or what I’m supposed to do.
One can safely assume that everyone goes through the freshman jitters. Nonetheless I am the one writing about my excitement and my fear as an incoming freshman and writing what so many are afraid to say: that college scares me.
It’s an exciting time, isn’t it? College is a stretch of time that will change our lives forever and allow us to grow into the adults we have all dreamed of one day being. The time spent at this university is not only limited to classes, parties, boyfriends and girlfriends, and student activities.
The time we spend here will shape who we are and what we become. It is a time to learn not only about reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to learn about ourselves in a way that we couldn’t do without time spent at U of L.
Despite all the exciting and enjoyable times I, as a freshman, will face at U of L, the thought of starting college makes me develop quite a large knot in my stomach.
There are still too many things I haven’t learned and don’t know yet for me to be starting college. My knowledge is limited to what I have already learned in school; not how to use that knowledge to grow and become a better person. No teacher taught me how to do that. I guess it is something we all have to learn how to do ourselves and in our own ways.
It is the journey of growth that will prove to be the toughest for some of us. What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, and isn’t that the whole point? For college to mold us and prepare us for whatever lies ahead in our unique and dissimilar futures? The answer to that question cannot possibly be answered by me at this point, for I have no experience yet. That immortal question will have to be saved for a much later column a few years down the road when I have experienced actual college life and know exactly what I am talking about.
When asked if I was excited about college or if I was dreading it with every ounce of my being, my answer was excited. But I wasn’t asked if I was scared or nervous. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I am feeling; a mixture of everything, I suppose. However, I know some new students are scared and nervous.
College is what you make of it. Plain and simple. You put in the effort and the rewards will be lifelong. At the end of the road, success in college is not so much a piece of paper with a grade on it, but how the knowledge that is gained while attending this university is used.
Isaac Asimov said that the true delight was finding out… but you have to try to find out before you can be delighted.
