I want to start off by stating that there is nothing wrong with the current college that I attend right now. I have a wonderful group of friends and I have had some awesome experiences, but Keuka College was never my first choice for school.
In fact, Keuka College wasn’t even my second choice; Keuka College was my safety school and it was the only college that I was accepted into when applying in my senior year of high school.
I attended a very prestigious all girls’ Catholic high school and I was expected by faculty, staff, and students to be able to attend practically any school I wanted following graduation. I had my heart set on one college in particular, The College of William and Mary, and it was practically all I could talk about my senior year of high school.
I wanted to go to William and Mary so badly that I had dreams almost every night of attending classes and hanging out in my dorm room. I took these dreams as a sign that I would most definitely be accepted. I had grown-up believing and understanding that if I wanted something badly enough, I would ultimately have it. Nothing could ever stand in the way of a girl and her dream college. With that in mind, I only applied to three schools, being irrationally certain that what I wanted would happen.
Obviously, that dream did not become a reality and neither did the ability to go to the second college I applied to either. I attended Keuka College, regretfully, the next fall and spring semesters, all the while working on my transfer application to William and Mary.
In June of 2016, I was once again denied admission to The College of William and Mary for my Sophomore year and I will be attending Keuka College for the second year in a row.
Since Keuka College was never my first choice and was not the college I originally ever wanted to attend, I feel guilty when my friends state that they cannot wait to go back, because I don’t really feel that way.
Keuka College is a good school, but there is nothing the school can possibly do to fill up the hole that I had hoped William and Mary would.
For the four years that I will be attending Keuka College, I will never truly look forward to returning. William and Mary was the school I had fallen in love with, but Keuka College was the only place I could go.
Most of the time, I feel like I’m missing out on the true “college experience”. That feeling when you can’t wait to go back to school, can’t wait to decorate your dorm, and can’t wait to see your campus again. I don’t feel that way. I wish that I did, but I don’t.
Having to return for a second year at my safety school has taught me about reality. Reality sucks, honestly, and we cannot have what we’ve always wanted all the time. I am upset and frustrated with my inability to be as excited and anxious to go back to college as my peers are, but this is my reality. My reality is that I didn’t get into the school I wanted and I am not where I wanted to be at this point in my life, but I have to learn to let this dream go. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to hurt but I have to learn to let my need for an undergraduate degree from The College of William and Mary go.
Children are told from the day they are born that they can do whatever they want and be whatever they hope to be, but I am slowly coming to the realization that this is not always true. We cannot always become who we have wanted to be, we can try, but sometimes we fail and we must accept that this dream is dead and gone. I am working to accept that my safety school, is now my school; there is no going back and I need to learn to create a new dream, a dream that involves Keuka College.
