Same Old Mo Since Circa 1990′s

CIGARETTE SMOKE TWIRLED IN SMALL TENDRILS TOWARDS THE SKY as I walked through the campus today. Of course, it’s just my luck to unknowingly pick the smokers section to sit down and rest. I’d only walked fifty yards and yet it’s surprising just how heavy a backpack can seem after having my shoulders be free of it for the last four years. I sighed, picking up my weary body from my bench and plopping down on the grass, far away from those who actively wish for black lungs. Waiting for my class to start, with no materials for entertainment, I began to ponder all that I’d gathered in the past twenty-four hours about higher education.

You know, college had a stigma to me. And that stigma was exactly what you see in movies -  that you walk into a class, get totally and utterly lost in the coursework, pull a few late nighters, wreck your car, get robbed, and then go into class late without your assignment and get ridiculed. I imagined, to my horror, walking into a class full of 300 students and made to sing “I’m a Little Tea Pot” while the teacher wallops me repeatedly in the back of the head with a ruler.

It was nothing like that.

College is…unexplicable. It feels like high school, except nobody cares about status. Of course, there are still the obnoxious jocks, prissy California girls that only talk about the O.C., nerds with perfect glasses and well spoken retorts, surfer bums (in Utah? Oh yes. Wanna be surfers) that have hair longer than me and say “Heeey!” and “What’s UP dude?” like it is some secret surfers code, and then there is me.

Me. The first girl to class, the quiet one that walks with my head down to avoid having to make eye contact with everyone. The preppy that has all the books, and has the whole syllabus read before the teacher utters a single sound. Me, with my pink calculator and black notebooks and brightly colored highlighters.

Me, who all the sudden is realizing that I’m still the same person I used to be in high school. To my pleasant surprise, I can still ask a question, take notes, be on time. I can still memorize and analyze and hypothesize. I can still quote and retort and solve. I still have the potential to be the preppy with a 3.97 GPA. I’m just glad that I didn’t get placed back into Elementary all over again, as I’ve seen in my dreams over and over for the past few months.

The main difference from High School to College is that here I am on my own, 100%. And surprisingly? I’m okay with that.

Oh, and there’s that slight difference of me killing my out-fashioned bangs sometime between then and now. Remind me to show you a photo of them sometime, they are an absolute RIOT.