I didn’t want to go to college. I was very adamant against the college experience. That can happen when you’re the child who’s supposed to go. Nothing against my brother, but based on his fool-hardy demeanor and the inability to have taken high school too serious, my parents were banking on me being the college kid. As I entered my junior year of high school, I wanted nothing more than to write my books. I was realistic and knew I couldn’t make a living off writing, but I was thinking I could find a job without a college degree.

There are many successful people who don’t have college degrees. Ellen DeGeneres, Steve Jobs, and Kim Kardashian are just a few who have made it in America without a degree. If you’re insistent on not going to college, then power to you my friend.

I, however, write this while sitting in my college residence hall. Spoiler, I went to college.

See, when I was still wavering, eyes bulging over the costs of these institutions and the wide variety of choices open to me, I made a snap judgement. I didn’t want to be the child who needs to go to college, I didn’t want to be the engineer that my dad wanted me to be or the state worker that my mom still pushes me toward. I wanted to be a writer, or at least that’s what I thought I wanted to be. You didn’t need to go to college to write a book.

My dad sat me down. We didn’t talk about costs or locations of universities. He told me simply, “Go to college for the experience. Write about those experiences.”

That wasn’t the direct quote. Don’t throw stones at me, this conversation was almost five years ago.

Though I grudgingly listened to him, there was still a matter of where I would go to college. For a little background, I’m from Quaker Hill, Connecticut. I went to a decently sized high school, Waterford High School. The majority of my classmates go to the University of Connecticut (UConn). I had UConn as a backup school, but if you’ve never walked on the campus, let me tell you something, it’s huge. There’s 4,109 acres that make up that campus. It’s a town unto itself. Quaker Hill, where I grew up, is a village. I liked the small places.

During that summer before my junior year, the ripe year of 2014, I went camping at Fairhaven State Park, New York. It was tradition for my family to camp on a different lake each year. My mom mentioned how there was a college nearby. She was more into the college searching than I was. She thought it would be a fun time to spend a day looking at this college I couldn’t pronounce. SUNY**? What in the world was a ‘suny’? What kind of place was called sunny? Not somewhere I wanted to go, that’s for sure. Overall, I was very against this ‘SUNY Oswego’ place. Moodily, I sat in the car and we drove the thirty minutes to campus from the campground.

You know that moment when you haven’t eaten all day and you finally see the waitress bringing your food towards you? It’s the moment where everything falls into place and you know that you’re going to be a-okay, your hunger will be sated. That’s what happened as we found our way to the tours. It was everything good that UConn had to offer, but on a smaller scale. In comparison, SUNY Oswego is 700 acres. I can walk from the academic building, Rich Hall, to the furthest academic building, Mahar Hall, in about 12 minutes, which I had to do during my Fall 2016 semester. After that first tour, walking by the lake, and falling in love with the surrounding town, I told my mom that this was it. This was the college that I wanted to go to. She blanched, but supported me as long as I was committed.

That is the story of how a Connecticut girl found herself within the New York school system. My decision of college was not easy made, and indeed it has not been easy throughout my journey. I still am a writer, but I’m so much more now. Come this May, I shall also be an Oswego Alumni, class of 2018. I stride pridefully into my last semester. Four semesters of working as a Resident Mentor, six semesters working as a receptionist in the Compass, four semesters of being a Vice President for Writers’ Open Forum, two semesters of being Editor-In-Chief of the Great Lake Review, and above all, three full years of being a student at the State Univeristy of New York at Oswego.

I have hope, as I am surrounded by encouraging professors who will help me make the connections I need to, and peers who have a drive for something more. Throughout life we have these choices we need to make, and many of them I regret. That does not mean that you should stop all the decision making, but instead try something new that you may be against. You could very well be pleasantly surprised when this decision turns you into the person you’ve needed to be.

**Note: SUNY stands for State University of New York