I couldn’t make too many expectations when I entered college.
- It was set to be my first time living away from home for longer than a week at a time.
I also had no idea I’d be experiencing some of the most personal freedom I’d experienced in my life, both before and since college. My college was a liberal arts college that was built on the principles of students directing their own education instead of the institution itself. So we were given academic advisors who would give us advice and help us with the bigger scope regarding our education, but they were there to always help guide and direct us and our decisions. They had us pick a major, which was called an area of concentration at our school. Once we had that chosen, we then looked at the required course load for graduation and started making decisions on various classes to take while completing our entire undergraduate education. While I loved the school, the freedom it gave me, the quality of the education, and the friends I made there—it wasn’t always the most perfect experience all of the time. For instance, we had these heating and cooling systems in our dorms that couldn’t be controlled from inside the dorm room. All of the furnaces and air conditioners were controlled by the administration from a central location on campus. If we were too hot or too cold, our best bet was to open a window or turn on fans to get some air circulation going. Some students felt too cold in the dorms while other students like myself always felt too hot.