A Won­der­ful Begin­ning
When you start col­lege, it can be easy to lose track of why you went there and what you're really there for. Start­ing in col­lege across the coun­try, either I lost sight of that for a lit­tle while, or the rea­sons I went cross coun­try weren't the right ones. I was a fresh­man at Occi­den­tal, who was going to be a Polit­i­cal Sci­ence major in pur­suit of a Law degree down the line because a law degree, even if I didn't want to be a prac­tic­ing lawyer, would be good grad­u­ate degree to have.

It made sense on paper and when I answered my fam­ily and other adults with what I'd be doing at col­lege. I thought it made sense to me. The prob­lem was, I didn't give half a damn about pol­i­tics. I found it dif­fi­cult to care about an Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem whose rules, clas­si­fi­ca­tions and struc­tures to me either seemed imprac­ti­cal, inef­fec­tive or, at their best, woe­fully inef­fi­cient. Unlike the twenty some other stu­dents in my pol­i­tics 101 class, I sim­ply didn't care, and sim­ply didn't see the point in caring.

Fast Times
So, my grades suf­fered, because not car­ing about the most basic class of the course of study I had con­vinced myself would be my major made me not care about all my other classes. I drank hard on week­ends, slept through most of my classes, and decided I'd enjoy what I could out of col­lege, which was drink­ing and friends and, as it turns out, that isn't a whole lot. I was placed on aca­d­e­mic pro­ba­tion for my sec­ond semes­ter at Occi­den­tal, and when I was pack­ing my bags to head back east, I found myself won­der­ing if it would really be such a bad thing not to have to pack to come back out west again.

Over vaca­tion at home though, with my mother ask­ing me about grades and the col­lege expe­ri­ence, I felt con­flict eat­ing at me inside. The school I had so non­cha­lantly left seemed to be call­ing me as a haven to return to. I didn't get it, so I wrote a story to try to sort myself out. It was a sim­ple lit­tle thing about how when I got the let­ter of expul­sion in five months, I'd run away form home. Cheesy, I know, but it's how I felt. If I didn't have col­lege I didn't want to face my mom and family.

A Time to Reflect
The story bal­looned as my char­ac­ter (myself) bounced around the coun­try vis­it­ing friends, and, even­tu­ally, vis­it­ing the col­lege he'd been expelled from. The char­ac­ter would party with his friends but feel empty know­ing he'd been expelled and flee again. It was at that point in the writ­ing, when I saw that if I got kicked out of Occi­den­tal, I'd yearn to come back and be heart­bro­ken that I'd be there and it still wouldn't be mine even if I could have my friends. It was then I real­ized that col­lege was more than that.

There was a turn around next semes­ter when I got back, firstly because I didn't want the shame of flunk­ing out of col­lege pri­mar­ily. There was pride moti­vat­ing me from the start. More than sim­ply scrap­ing by though, I began to find other things. First, a major that I cared about. I became and Eng­lish Lit Major and began writ­ing for the school news­pa­per. For a while, I avoided being social, think­ing it had been a plague that had ruined me before, but after a month of hid­ing, I found myself going out on week­ends and enjoy­ing myself again. Why? Because the times you have at col­lege are an organic com­po­si­tion of all the things you do. The par­ties on the week­ends are incred­i­ble because of the work you face through­out the week. The friends you make are friends you make while you're intensely study­ing things you're pas­sion­ate about and work­ing for clubs and other orga­ni­za­tions on the campus.

To Return with Mean­ing
To lose the insti­tu­tion is to lose that which made my friends spe­cial to me, that bond we shared. To lose my friends would have done the same to the insti­tu­tion I feel. It's in learn­ing this, rec­og­niz­ing how much Occi­den­tal meant to me that I was able to come back, pull myself out of the pit my GPA was in, and rejoin the com­mu­nity as a pas­sion­ate and con­tribut­ing mem­ber in aspects both social and academic.

I hope any­one going to col­lege hence­forth can rec­og­nize that you find your pas­sions and life in all areas of its life, and that col­lege means as much to you as you put into these dif­fer­ent areas, social, aca­d­e­mic, and extracur­ric­u­lar. I know any­one with the open mind to find some­thing in all these areas to enjoy will walk away from their four years with their only regret being that they didn't have more time. I'll let you in on one more secret though: that's what makes col­lege spe­cial, that from the moment you go through ori­en­ta­tion, you only have it for those days. Make the most kids.