I have always been a creature of habits and routines, I like to have everything as planned as it possibly can be and any changes must be made in advanced or I struggle to adapt. For most of my childhood I had my future all planned out; I would graduate high school, get accepted to University of Georgia, and become a history teacher whose students would love each and every lesson. As I’m staring at the last few months of my college career I’ve realized that of my three dreams I’ve only officially accomplished the first one and that’s okay. It had always been my dream to go to the University of Georgia; I dreamed of watching my favorite SEC team play between the hedges surrounded by hoards of fellow screaming students and a future UGA alumni sticker to adorn my eventual soccer mom van. These dreams were unfortunately shattered when during my Senior year of high school I got my rejection letter from University of Georgia and truly felt my world crumble around me.

I’m not someone who dabbles in dramatics when it comes to facing adversity or disappointment, I try my best to live by the “get up and shake it off” philosophy but in that moment as I read through the email I had been so sure would be an acceptance I wanted nothing more than to lay down and cry for hours. I’m not going to pretend that I kept a stiff upper lip and moved on quickly, I cried and cried, called myself a failure, and stayed in a stunned silence once I had cried myself to exhaustion. I took a full day to just wallow in grief and then the next morning my family rallied around me and forced me to begin looking for other colleges. I had made the mistake of being confident that I would be accepted and had chosen to not look for any backup schools, my rejection letter came in the beginning of my Spring semester as most colleges were closing up their application availability window. I picked a college that was five hours from home and more importantly as opposite in geography as UGA as I could get.

My freshman year of college was difficult, I was still broken hearted over not getting into my dream school and the college I had chosen while good was just not the environment for my personality. Those five hours from home made me grow as a person, it made me become an adult and realize that it was time to begin relying on myself instead of constantly relying on the familiar at home with my family and friends. I can never say I regret choosing to spend my Freshman year so far from home because it lead me in the direction I needed to go with my education and my personal life, it put the important things into perspective, and was truly a blessing in disguise. I also made friends there who will never know how much they helped keep me from sinking into my own negative feelings.

I do not want this to read as a sob story or a cheesy inspirational self-discovery novel but instead to truly say that whenever your biggest plans fall short it is often because this was the journey you were meant to be lead down. I still have twinges of pain when I remember that I didn’t make it to UGA or even when my plans in my personal life haven’t gone the way I want but I try to shake it off and remind myself that from adversity comes a sense of strength. You are completely valid in your feelings when disappointment and heartbreak comes your way, you are allowed to cry, you are allowed to grieve, and you are even allowed to wallow in all of those things so long as at the end of the day you pick yourself back up off the ground (often with help and support) with your chin held high and decide that this is just a bump in your journey intended to make you grow in ways you never could expect.