This time next week I will be saying goodbye to sleep, leisure reading time, and random dance parties in my room. You know, all the important stuff. I've been dreaming about this day since I was a kid. All my fights with my mother ended with me storming up to my room, muttering, "I cannot wait until I leave for college." And then I signed up to go leave for college, and I can't wait until the day I return. Fate has a really screwed up sense of humor sometimes. I'll be a twenty minute bus ride away (I'd say a ten minute drive away, but I think all of state college will cringe if they hear that I'm driving), but I still feel twenty times shakier than when I was leaving for Colorado for a month. I'm just going to have to sip on my third cup of coffee and contemplate why this is. Maybe it's the finality of the situation. A month of living in a dorm is vacation. Two months is a growing experience. A semester is when you realize you can't be that person who lives in your parents' basement, and you will eventually have to pay the bills, vacuum the rug, and shell out that half a million dollars for your 2.3 kids' and golden retriever's life.
It's strange to get into the collegiate attitude, when for so many of us, it's like going into the 13th grade. Quite a few of my dear friends will be by my side, which keeps my "forever alone" freak outs to a minimum of twice a day, rather than five times. But it's also an obstacle to know a large number of people who will be attending Penn State with me. It's a safety net I can be comforted by knowing is there, but can't fall into. The advice to incoming freshman is to "treat your college town as your hometown," but I have to flip the situation and see State College in a whole new light. My hometown is now my college town.
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