I wrote this piece in 2018, right after transferring to my dream school that I now have a degree from. Now that I have this platform I would like to share it for anyone who might have had to postpone moving cities for college due to the pandemic.
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I'm certainly not the 1st young adult to say that going to a community college for my freshman year was the best idea. But I don't know many people who would say that they miss it once they get to their dream school.
I have a history of getting the opposite outcome of what I expected:
I was expecting to hate my freshman year considering that I had to spend it back at home while most of my friends and peers went off to their dream schools for their 1st-year of freedom.
I spent my freshman year of college not wanting to ever leave. It helped that 1 of my close friends was also going to the same campus with me. Having her there is probably 90% of the reason why I even enjoyed my freshman year. I had someone to study with and hang out with while I was trying not to hate the fact that I was still in my hometown for college. I was taking all of the hard classes that I hated taking in high school but on the college level. So if I was on the verge of failing something she was there to help me because she's smart good at school Another plus side was even though our community college is 5 minutes from my house, which was in a small community everyone referred to as a "bubble," it served as a melting pot for my little section of Houston I called home. I met new people who were more like me than anyone I had ever met in my then 6 years of living in Texas.
Since I was gonna be there for a year I decided that I would fill up my free time by joining and student organization. Ultimately, I didn't have to look far, because one encounter with a group o young black students turned into the formation of the campus's Black Student Union. The thing about community colleges is that no matter how large the student body is, there is always a small group of people who want to make a difference. So when they found me, I found something to look forward to. Even though it was a small group, most of the meetings we were all still able to talk to each other as if we were good old friends because we all shared one thing in common.
The biggest thing that I got out of going to community college my 1st year was a sense of stability. I didn't have anything distracting me like an annoying roommate, a tiny closet of a dorm, or the anxiety of participating in a 500 student lecture class. I was even able to hold down a job and develop a great relationship with my managers. I thought more like an adult being at home my 1st year even though I was under my parents' roof with the same rules and curfew. People I met in those classes are still good friends of mine today. The work I did in those 8 classes is what's getting me through my 2nd year. So despite my assumptions that me being back home meant that I wasn't a real college student, I felt like I was experiencing university exactly how I imagined.
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