Four Years at the Mount

Sophomore Year

(Sept, 2010) It’s a serial feeling going back to college after 3 months off. It’s much like the feeling of coming home after being at college for a year. You don’t quite know what to do with yourself. On one hand you’re excited with the whole process of moving in and seeing your college friends whom you haven’t seen in 3 months. On the other hand, it’s sad to be leaving your hometown and those friends that you have been though the thick and thin with.

I’m actually surprised I now have this attitude because if you asked me in June, if I was excited for summer, I would have told you no. Why I wasn’t excited for those endless summer nights chilling with friends and relaxing on the beach is quite simple really. I wasn’t going to have a summer like that. My summer would be spent trying to find a job to pay the constant flow of bills that always seemed to be floating my way. The job that I had last summer before I went to college went to school, was suppost to be the way I was going to be able to pay for all these endless bills. That however fell through due to the company reorganizing.

Now I was stuck, I was coming back to Wisconsin needing to find a job ASAP. Looking for a good paying job in today’s economy was an impossible and stressful task. Nothing was going right as I got back home from college, even the simple task of finding a job was impossible. The summer of bad news started, with no money, no job, and no way out of the house because I didn’t have a good enough reason. It was getting harder and harder to just leave the house without countless questions being asked about where I was going. Luckily I had the barn to escape to, but very soon that turned into an added stress very soon after discovering that Sona had severe active arthritis and I was faced with no other choice than selling my best friend.

It was the hardest thing that I have ever had to do and Sona is the prominent person on my mind as I begin to go on another year adventure at college. She was the best thing that has ever happened to me and changed my life in ways I would never imagine. There’s a saying that goes, "Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away." I’m going to rely on these moments with Sona that took my breath away; those memories that you will always remember, to help keep Sona’s memory alive in my heart and get me through those times when I needed a shoulder to lean on.

The struggles make you stronger and the changes make you wise and happiness has its way of taking its sweet time. This is something that I have really learned this summer, through all the hardships that happened through my summer of bad news, good things happened too. I have kept up close friendships and even discovered that I could open my heart and let someone in. Everything happens for a reason and maybe I don’t know the reason for having to let go to Sona but there has got to be one. It will be hard to go back to the Mount without my best friend and there will be countless times when I will desperately wish she was there.

But now it’s time to stop dwelling on the summer and start looking ahead to the future! College is before us and on this last night only a few hours away from my second home all those feelings of excitement are flowing back. They started slowing creeping back as I was packing the day before I was set to leave, probably not the greatest idea because packing for a year is really difficult. Once everything was packed and the last load of laundry was washed it was time to load everything up. It turned out to be quite a challenge to fit everything into my Honda accord! It all did fit, except my wonderful car deciding again that something needed to be wrong with it the day before I needed it to drive 10 hours! There I was calling up my trusty mechanic seeing if he can somehow come up with new tires before I had to leave. Was told to bring my car to the show right away in the morning and he would call the tires in. Sure enough my body decides that it needed to check up on the lack of sleep that it has been getting for the past four days, and I totally slept through my alarm. Story of my life it seems….

Hours late already my mechanic calls in the tires and within two hours I was ready to go! In a way it was nice I got to hang out with my best friend and family for two extra hours, but it also meant that I would be up late driving. Luckily I have a need for speed and the 10 hours I predicted it would take was shortened a little. Driving that long of a distance gives you a lot of time to think about what lies ahead and what your plans are for the next year. That’s where my mind continued to wonder as I was driving—I guess I’m just a little bit excited to begin the year. Life at The Mount is so much different from life at home and honestly I welcome the change of pace. Are you ready to tackle another year with me?