Big Changes

As I finish packing up for college for what will end up being the final time, I find myself becoming really sad that this isn't the place for me. ISU, as great of a school as it is, was not the right fit for me. I loved my classes and my studies, which is why it took me two years to figure it out, but I do not feel at home there. Nothing I did at school made me feel welcome, accepted, or truly special. It was, in the end, just too big. I could not find a group and fit in. I couldn't find my niche that made everything else not matter. I did not belong. And that's not really a statement about anything I did wrong, anything wrong with the school, or anything wrong with the people. I just chose the wrong school, and didn't figure out for too long. I don't know my professors, I don't know my fellow psychology students, I don't know anyone, really. I don't feel like I can change anything. I do not feel empowered. I feel like a number. And that's not the way anyone wants to feel.

I used to look at the fact that I was going to a big school and think that there were a lot of things I would learn at ISU that I couldn't learn at a small school. Things that would help me later in life. Things like how to guide myself through everything, how to figure it out on my own, how to motivate myself, how to succeed without incentive or outside motivation. And while I think the last one is still true, I also feel like a lot of those things are not good life lessons. When I go to grad school I will not be one in 27,000. I will be one in maybe 10 that that professor is working with. I will have guidance. I will have someone I can turn to for help. And I am not prepared for that. I do not know how to ask the right questions. I do not know how to work closely with professors. I do not know how to do research. I do not know how to communicate. I know how to study and read and occasionally write. When I graduate from grad school, I will not be one in 27,000. I will be a member of a team. I will work closely with other people of equal, higher, or lesser education and experience, and I have no idea how to do any of that. I know how to read and study and write.

In all, I do not feel prepared for life outside of college, and it terrifies and saddens me. If I could go and do it all over, I would have chosen a different school. Do not get me wrong, I have had some great moments at school I have made a few very good friends and many acquaintances at school. Some of them are friends I hope to keep forever. Some of them I know I will not speak to after I walk across the stage this spring.

I am graduating a year early. I am moving on with my life outside of college, and I am going to figure out how to do all of the things I wanted to learn in college that I never did learn. I am going to hopefully pursue AmeriCorps next year, and do something empowering and world-changing. I want to make a difference, something I could never do at school. I feel small and powerless. I feel defeated. And I refuse to put myself again and again back to the same place that makes me feel this way. I keep crying as I am packing because I wasted 3 years of my life at the wrong school. Things could have been so much different, and so much better had I just made a different choice 3 years ago. It may be too late to choose a different school, but it is not too late to change the future. Things will get better and I will change the world.