So fast, so fast

Looking back now it makes me laugh: we were growing our hair; we were cutting class.

Great words by singer Kenny Chesney, they describe the feelings I've been having as I grow toward my last year of college.  It's hard to believe that it was three years ago that I was first heading to Florida State University.  Fresh out of high school, I thought I was all that.  Oh how wrong I was.  At a fresh 17-years-old I was heading to college, not knowing what to expect, what changes I would go through, what experiences were about to be had.

Looking back, I can easily say that my time (so far; remember I'm only three fourths done) at Florida State has been the best time of my life.  I've grown in so many ways. I've learned about myself, learned about life, learned about love, learned about truth, lies, friendship, and so many other things.  It's hard to adequately explain all that I've learned in the last three years at FSU.

I started in June of 2008. It's not June of 2011 and I am looking forward to going back as an RA (Resident Assistant/babysitter) for the CARE program.  I'll be in Landis Hall--one building and three floors away from where I began my collegiate career three years earlier.  Gilchrist 101.  Those six weeks held memories that have partially shaped my times at FSU.  I met people I would lose touch with, I met some of my best friends. I grew as a person.  I learned what it meant to truly have freedom: the ability to go out and come back home as you please without answering to anyone.

I thought I knew freedom back in high school; my parents were very relaxed and open, while being very strict and parental at the same time.  It's hard to explain my relationship with my parents, save to say it's the best relationship I think parents and their son can have.  I learned at college that it's my life, compiled of my decisions (good, bad and ugly), my thoughts, my emotions. MY life.  That's the crucial part that far too few people understand. It's your life.  The only person you have the ability to make happy is you.  I know too many people who live their lives to please those around them. 

Forget that.  A poet, who happens to be my grandfather -- the man I get all of my writing ability from -- once said that this life "is about all said and done. I realize it won't be my only one." This life isn't our only one, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend this one working for someone else. 

Back to the point.  I've come so far in the last three years.  June 2008--I had no idea what I was going to study in college.  If even then you had told me I'd be an English major I'd have told you that you're nuts.  That being said, here I am writing my thoughts.  I even got an "A" in my advanced writing course.  There are so many things that can be learned in college.

As many before me have said, "you learn more in college outside of the classroom than you do in the classroom." This is absolutely true.  While colleges focus you on taking this class or that class, or what your major is and your GPA, they all realize that you're going to learn more about yourself than you could ever learn about biology or chemistry or psychology or any other -ology. 

Selfology. That's what any college really sells.  The learning of your self.  You can learn how you think politically, socially, emotionally, psychologically and methodically.  People think in different ways. Some like it blunt; some like it to be sugar-coated.  Your parents can only do so much molding of your character.  It's up to you, who you become.  You can follow the rules, dot all of your i's, cross all of your t's.  Or you can rebel and be that which all parents fear: the free-spirited thinker.  Know this though, society never progresses without rebels at the head.  Do you think Martin Luther King, Jr. crossed his t's? Do you think Maya Angelou dotted all of her i's (metaphorically of course. She's a writer so she dotted her i's literally)?  Do you think John Fitzgerald Kennedy just followed the status quo? 

I'm not telling you to be the change you see in the world, but be the change you see in your world, that's all you can do.