Are You Ready?
Samantha Strub
English Major - Class of 2013
(June, 2010) A year has passed,
and now we stand on the brink of returning to a world
where we are surrounded by the paradox of everything yet
nothing being the same. In a few days we will reluctantly
give our hugs and, fighting the tears, say goodbye to
people who were once just names on a sheet of paper to
return to those that we hugged and fought tears to say
goodbye to before we ever left. We will leave our best
friends to return to our best friends and family. We will
go back to our hometowns and back to traditional summer
activities like working those minimum-wage jobs. We leave
the Mount to go down that familiar road toward home and,
even though it has been months, it will seem like only
yesterday.
As you walk into your old bedroom,
every emotion will pass through as you reflect on how your
way of life has changed and how you have become a
different person. You suddenly realize that the things
that were most important to you a year ago don't seem to
matter so much anymore. The things you hold highest now no
one at home will completely understand. Who will you call
first? Where are you going to work? Who will be at the
party Saturday night? What has everyone been up to? Who
from school will you keep in touch with? How long before
you actually start missing people barging in without
calling or knocking? Who will go on IHOP and Taco Bell
runs at three in the morning? How long until you adjust to
sleeping in a room by yourself or realize your three best
friends aren't sleeping in the room next door?
As these thoughts run through your
mind, you realize how much things have changed. You
understand that the hardest part of college is balancing
the two completely different worlds you now live in,
trying desperately to hold onto the new world of college
while figuring out what you have left behind. In one or
two days’ traveling time, we will leave a world where our
best friends live next door, the noise is constant, and we
walk across campus to eat--where we instant message,
barely wake up for early morning classes, and
procrastinate perpetually. Our old world seems foreign to
us, despite the fact that we have lived in it for eighteen
years. You never would have thought that, being away for
only a year, it would be so hard to adjust. It’s not so
much that a year has passed but that our daily schedule is
so different. Most of us will not be able to have the
carefree summer that we had following our senior year of
high school. We will have to take a job that pays minimum
wage and has horrible hours. Being responsible took on a
new meaning once we packed our bags and drove out.
But it is different now...We now
know the meaning of true friendship. We know whom we have
kept in touch with over the past year and whom we hold
dearest. We've left our high-school worlds to deal with
the real world. We’ve fallen in love and had our hearts
broken; we've helped our best friends through the toughest
times of their lives, sometimes even with things that
their best friends at home couldn't be there for. We've
stayed up all night just to be there for a friend. Yes,
we’ve even pulled those all nighters studying because of
the infamous procrastination. We've partied the night away
and sometimes acted stupidly, but we always supported each
other afterwards.
There have been times when we've
felt so helpless being hours away from home when we know
our families or friends needed us most, and there have
been times when we know we have made a difference in the
lives of our friends. We realize that college friends
become a part of our families. This happens because you
are around them constantly; you eat together, study
together, and watch movies through the night. You laugh,
you cry, you fight; you do absolutely nothing together
until you cannot seem to remember how you ever lived
without them. They become an important part of your life.
There are times, however, when you think your best friends
back home are the only ones who will understand, but then
you look around at those who were once just names on a
piece of paper and realize you can count on them for
anything. These people have become your best friends, way
more than just people you will graduate with, but friends
who will eventually be at your wedding. It has been a long
road, and you had to discoverer the meaning of true
friendship by being betrayed, but that is what life is all
about, taking the mistakes you have made and turning them
into lessons learned.
A few days from now we will leave
this new world. We will take down our pictures, pack up
our clothes and everything else in our dorm rooms. No more
going down the hall for a quick hello that turns into an
hour-long conversation or doing nothing for hours on end.
We will leave our college friends whose random emails,
text messages, and phone calls will bring us to laughter
and tears this summer. We will take our memories and
dreams and put them away for now, saving them for our
return to this world.
A few days from now we will arrive
back to the familiar. We will unpack our bags and have
dinner with our families. We will drive over to our best
friend's house and sit around for hours. We will return to
the same friends whose random emails, text messages, and
phone calls have brought us laughter and tears over the
past year. We will put our dreams on hold for the summer
but never forget about dreaming big.
A few days from now we will dig
deep inside to find the strength and conviction to adjust
to change and still keep each other close. And somehow, we
will find our places between these two worlds.... are you
ready?
Read past editions of Samantha Strub's Four Years at the Mount