This is an opinion piece.
Life takes you down a weird road at times, it’s how we find ourselves here. Some of us are here for the education, some for the moments that will last in memory for a lifetime. Through all of this there is happiness and sorrow, but that is how life in the real world is as well.
It’s taking the steps that you have taken a thousand times before. It is goofing off in the student center, simply because you don’t want to go home and wait for your next class. It is taking the time to find a quiet place and just breathe while you wait for the world around you to change at its own pace.
When you are talking about the reality for community college, it is like waiting in an airport, but the TSA agents, don’t actually want to bite your head off (Huntsville campus police, you are the best).
The world is changing around our little nook of the world for some of us. Life in the student center is changing at a rapid rate, as I guess it always has. But in the same breath, it is different, because it is not something that is being seen on TV, it’s real. Our tiny low budget comedy special.
Now that my time here at Calhoun is ending, as I prepare to transfer to a four-year university, I can look back on my time here with appreciation. The teachers here have taught me a lot about life, that no matter where you come from, in some way you will always have a home to go to, even if we don’t have a dorm to call our own yet.
That is what makes this place special as well though. It’s a lot like high school, but yet so different, especially when you are coming in like I did as someone who would be classed as a nontraditional student.
For me, it shows an evolution of the times. A difference in the way it was back then. College in and of itself, is a crazy hodgepodge of mixed realities, that you really would not find anywhere else on earth. People ride in and out of groups, and like an episode of Cheers, everyone knows your name, in a good way for the most part.
Being in this environment, having the comfort that one has when it comes to their current situation makes transferring sound foreign. We live in this little blind self-delusion, if you will, that there is nothing that is coming after all of this, and that we will stay the same forever.
The truth is though that it does change, and that is okay. The memories that you make of tossing rice filled balloons, hanging out with the guys, and just talking of life in general, are part of the evolution of self, and this moment is just a part of that.
So, when it comes to what comes next, take a deep breath, mind your manners, and be brave enough to make that step. Everything that you really need to know, will come with time.
Good Luck Calhoun, in making those next steps, wherever your plane is taking you.