College Is A Lot Like One Giant Family

This blog is a result of the realization that I had at about 3AM this morning... College is a lot like having one giant family... or at least at a small school that's what it feels like, I suppose the concept would not apply so well at a larger school.

Love it or hate it, but it's how things are here. Yes, there are times when this "family" is a nuisance, such as the days when all you want to do is be left alone, yet it seems like someone is knocking on your door every 5 minutes. After awhile, it doesn't even phase you when people that you've never met know your name and faculty members have actual conversations with you. You may also discover that people know what you did, even if you haven't told anyone (oh the joys of high school... but at least in college the stories are somewhat realistic, lol).

People went to their houses for Christmas and facebook started filling up with status messages of "I want to be home". After spending 4 months at college, it's as if you lose your attachment to your real home. High school friends are now more of acquaintances and the people that you now call friends might just be clear across the country. All of a sudden, you have to find a way to entertain yourself without watching movies in Wes's room, having Erin do your hair, or hanging out with the boyfriend that you are accustomed to seeing multiple times per day. All of a sudden you can choose when you eat and what you eat. You find that you can't sleep because it's TOO QUIET (Who would have ever thought that you'd miss the sound of slamming doors, yelling in the hallway, music blasting from 3 rooms away, or what sounds like the people in the room above yours repeatedly dropping a bowling ball on the floor?). At home, it takes you a minute to figure out why the washing machine won't take your quarters. You think of a movie that you want to watch and you have to actually go rent it because there are not 100 people around to borrow from. [I'm off the subject now, but I'm just gonna go with it.] You go to a non-mountain town and gas is $1 cheaper, Alco and Safeway are not the only stores to go to, and the air suddenly has oxygen molecules in it. Watching TV loses it's excitement because you only have a few people to fight over it with. You sit down to eat dinner with your family and there is more than 1/4 inch of space on either side of your chair (For those of you who don't understand this one, my group of friends has managed to, on more than one occasion, put 10 or 15 people around a table intended for 6 people).

Ok, now to attempt to get back on topic. College is like a family because... your "college family" (friends/classmates/dorm mates/other applicable people) are the ones who take care of you when you're sick, they're the ones who calm you down after a fight with your mom, they're with you through the good times and the bad, they're the ones who drive you absolutely crazy yet you love them anyway, and they're the ones who don't care what your room looks like- in fact, they may also be the ones helping you clean out the crockpot that has been growing moldy Ramen for 2 1/2 months. They're the ones who you're an ABSOLUTE JERK to, yet they refuse to leave your side because they know that it's just a phase. And right about the time you think everyone hates you, you find out how many people are really there for you (aka WAY WAY WAY more than you thought). The last, but certainly not least, reason why your friends at college are like a family is: they run downstairs in indecently short shorts and sit at the front desk waiting for you when they recieve a call saying you need to be "guided" to your room, they spend 4 hours at the hospital with you in the middle of the night when they would much rather be sleeping and refuse to accept the nurse's offer of the couch in the waiting room, they're the ones who put you into your pajamas because you're too out of it to do it yourself, they pull your hair back even when you have puke in it, it doesn't even phase them when you lay down in their lap covered in puke, they clean up the floor you puked all over, and they try not to laugh when you get your face stuck in the trash can.


I would like to leave you with a thought to ponder from a University of Oxford postcard:

Why Study?

The more I study,
the more I know.

The more I know,
the more I forget.

The more I forget,
the less I know.

So why study?


Until next time, try not to get into too much trouble :)