High school students' feelings about going away to college differ in many ways. On one hand you have those who are looking forward to going and practically have their career already plotted out. On the other you have those who don't even know what they are going to wear for school that day much less what they want to do with the rest of their lives. I was one of those that didn't know what they wanted to do in life at all. I'm not saying that I am now in a position where I know where my life is going to lead, but I have a general idea that keeps me from stumbling into the unknown.

I was very scared when I first decided to go to college. You see any type of education after high school was something I had never even thought about. I will tell the truth in this article: I came to school chasing after my high school girlfriend of three years. She came to Radford a semester before I did back in '97; for her it was expected that she would go to college. Both of her parents are graduates of universities; mine are not even graduates of high school. My parents are great people, but they have to deal with working class problems that make their life more stressful than it should be. I believed that I would never escape from my small town. The things I had to look forward to were factory or fast food work, and I was pretty damn sick of that already.

So if someone were to say to me that it was silly to come here and take out a full years worth of financial aid just to chase a girl, I would agree. Things changed once I got here though. First I enrolled as a pre-major and began to completely stress about the workload.

It may sound funny but Radford University blew me away in terms of education standards. My high school was not known for its very high-end curriculum. I was so scared of failing that I managed to get a 3.6 GPA for the year. Then it happened the best thing I thought I had going for me in my life fell apart around me. No, not my GPA, but that did drop as soon as I figured out how to slack and still get by. I broke up with my girlfriend. Looking back on my two years here, I still had no clue about what I was going to do with myself, and I thought about leaving school altogether. My grades started to drop drastically, and I never went to class.

Thankfully I met some very awesome people here who helped me through this rough part in my life. I went through a very depressed time where I didn't feel I had any direction at all, and it was only because of the friends I made here at college that I am still here.

At the time I didn't realize it, but I needed to be here for myself, not another person. I had to do this, because it was the only way I was going to get out of my town and away from the problems I had when I was there. I had to come to school so I could experience life, not be limited by it. Upon threat of a beating by a good friend that will remain nameless, I decided to stick it out and really examine what I wanted to with my time here.