Going to college has been an experienced describable as metaphorically jumping down the rabbit hole. I had always known I would eventually attend college; I had very little choice in that decision. It was always in my head as something unimaginable and far in my future. Because I had no idea what I was getting into or even if I could survive, I leaped without thought into a whole new world—a world that seems as different from my own as wonderland was from Alice’s.

The blind leap of faith was the first parallel I felt I had in common with Alice from the beginning. Alice went down “never once consider5ing how in the world she was to get out again.” (12) Whether or not this decision was foolish (or even dangerous), it was necessary for who she was that she embark into the unknown on the adventure. I did not have a choice to go to college or not. It was not even a decision of my parents, but rather a component of my nature that forced me to blindly hurdle into a world of which I had so little understanding.

Since getting to Austin and UT, I have found that the differences of this place to the places I have experienced in my past are far greater than I anticipated. I expected the unexpected, but even realizing my ignorance, I did not foresee college life being quite as different as it is.

Like Alice, I seem to have moments when I ask myself, “if I am not the same… ‘Who in the world am I?’” (23) In this place where things I took for granted as normal and true are suddenly not, you tend to question all things. “Alice had gotten so much in the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.” (19)