With graduation around the corner, one gets to thinking.  And when like me thinks, one wants to organize said thoughts.  So I've started reminiscing on the last few years.  Here's the beginning, my freshman year.....

 

It first became real to me that night on a balcony at Rice Hall, overlooking the campus as I completed my weekend of freshmen orientation.  What had seemed for so long to be merely an afterthought had slowly worked it’s way to the forefront, and it was at this moment that I knew for certain I would spend my college years here.  It was one of those timeless moments that stand out as a marker on life’s road, with me staring into the night at a quite campus, surrounded by the lights of a place that would soon become my home.  My thoughts were filled with conflict, with unease and trepidation as I wondered if I’d made the right decision, and with excitement and anticipation at this world I was about to enter, knowing that there was no turning back. 

 

            Later that summer, in mid-August, I arrived.  Nick, my fellow Tate high school alumni and soon-to-be roommate, and I headed over to Hightower with our parents in tow.  Ah, Hightower, the honors dorm , the boomerang, where the “smart” kids serious about their college careers would dwell.  Third floor, 2^nd door on the left, and was that couch ever a beast to get up those stairs.  With our stuff unloaded, the parents had to leave, and for mine this would be a first.  My mom, of course, laughed some and cried some more. Even now, five years later, she still cries every August when I leave again.  My dad, of course, was his usual stoic self, not giving voice to the thoughts that surely raged within.  My mom told me later that he cried some too on the way home. Only once does your oldest son leave home for the first time…

 

            The next two weeks would be some of the hardest of my time at State.  It’s weird being away, having that freedom, and it’s weird how different people react to it.  Some go overboard, taking this newfound freedom as an opportunity to drink all night, sleep all day, and pretty much catch up on all the fun they missed the past few years under parental oppression.  My adjustment was a little less dramatic.  I missed home some, missed the family some, but mostly I missed the familiarity.  But it was fun too, and I found I soon didn’t have much time to spend missing my old life, which grew more distant by the day.

 

            And some things I will never forget…Beating Florida, and Steve Spurrier, in the upset of the season and seeing the goalposts come down.  All night sessions on the LAN, an amusement only “honors” kids would enjoy.  That most ingenious of programs, Napster, the original, file sharing in its glory days. My ’88 Monte Carlo SS, man I hated to give that thing up. The BSU, priority on Tuesday, where most of my friends came from, and my primary social outlet.  Dr. McMahan, trying to teach the dedicated students chemistry and convince the rest of them to change majors.  Thinking that Clyde Williams’ Honors Comp class was the hardest thing ever.  Poor, unsuspecting soul that I was.  Freshman shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves engineering majors, for they have no idea the misery that’s in store.  Mornings and sometimes nights in the chapel, where I sit now as I type this, praying, reading, or thinking.  The presidential election of 2000, who could ever forget that ordeal?  I got asked to prom twice that spring by girls still at my high school.  I turned ‘em both down, I was in college now.  The evening buffet at Perry cafeteria.  The late nights, the jumping out of bed and rushing to class, the community showers, the never-ending activity, the glory that was dorm life.

 

      The year ended, my GPA somehow intact, ready for a Florida summer, but now knowing that going off to school was quite possibly the best decision I’d ever made.