I had visited my cousin several times during her freshman year at UT; I felt I already knew exactly what college was going to be like. But after I’d been in Austin for a few weeks, I already knew we both had very different journeys ahead of us. As Hardy says in Jude the Obscure, “How the world is made for each of us!” (658). We each have our own callings, aspirations, fates, experiences, and lives ahead of us.

My high school experience, in a small, everyone-knows-you, prep-school definitely prepared me for college academically, but not socially. I was used to uniforms, advisories, and senior hall. Having grown up with the same group from age 4 to graduation, I was definitely ready for something different, something bigger. The thought of meeting hundreds of new people at UT excited me, and I couldn’t wait to get to Austin. However, meeting new people wasn’t as easy as I pictured it, and I have had to push myself and “get out there” in order to make my experience here as rewarding as possible.

I believe my college experience will be what I make of it. I could fall into one of two extremes: to a) be like Jude, “crazy for books,” (Hardy, 649) but isolated, with the “sensation being that of one who walked but could not make himself seen or heard” (Hardy, 656) or, b) always seen and heard, always out partying, but never spending time at the books. I really don’t find myself at either extreme. Coming to college has put more responsibilities on me than ever before; I have to choose when to be studying, when to be socializing, and as a result, I find myself “suddenly gr[owing] older” (Hardy, 653). It’s scary and it’s different, but I hope to live this part of my life with no regrets.

I always hear stories of people going off to college and coming home a totally different person. One of my friends got her tongue pierced and dyed her hair soon after arriving at Hampshire College, another has become totally immersed in her “new home”: New York City. But we still talk regularly and the voices I hear over the phone are the same. Though we are all growing, adapting, learning from our mistakes, and becoming our adult selves, the person we brought to college will still form a great part of who we will be once we leave. I don’t feel I have changed in any drastic ways over the past few months. Unlike Megan and Brad, I still have the same major and the similar goals to ones I had starting out at UT. I do know I am maturing, gaining responsibilities, and setting new standards for myself. In this “paradise of the learned,” (639, Writing on the Walls: From Premodern to Postmodern) I hope to simply better myself.