Leaving home for college rewarding experience

by Samantha Rodriguez, staff writer

 

Life has a lot of obstacles that have to be overcome to be successful.

Some may be terrifying, involving tears, even being away from family and friends. But pushing forward and persevering is what makes one get one step closer to what he or she reaching for, even if the sacrifices are painful.

I was sitting in my apartment recently thinking of what to write for my first article in the SPC newspaper. I was clueless, as I had never written anything for a newspaper, just the usual essays for my English classes. As I as sitting there, I also was listening to my roommates and friends talking about how moving away from home to attend college has made a big difference in their lives in just the few weeks they’ve been here.

 During my senior year in high school, I remember applying for colleges and picking out those close to home. When I came to Senior Sneak Peek at SPC, I liked the school environment, but I didn’t like the distance from home. I stressed over which college that I wanted to attend, Cisco Junior College or South Plains College. All that was running through my mind was that CJC is an hour away from home, and SPC is three hours away.

It wasn’t that big of a deal, but to me it meant the end of the world to be that far away from my family, friends, and hometown when I’ve been there my whole life. I made up my mind finally and decided to attend SPC in the fall and see how it goes, even if I had to deal with the sacrifice of being away from my family.

The good thing was that I had friends attending SPC also, and some are in Lubbock. That still didn’t change how I felt about the distance. I wouldn’t be alone in a totally new environment, but it wouldn’t be the same without my twin brother right there by my side for the first day of classes.

During the next few weeks, I was getting used to college and liking it more and more each day. I consider myself lucky, because as I was there listening to my friends speak, one mentioned where she was from, and it’s more than a 1,000 miles away from Levelland. She made the sacrifice of leaving her state and family behind to attending school in Texas. We all just looked at her in shock.

 Running through our minds was, “what the heck made her decided to come to school here?” When I asked her why she chose this school, she simply said, “This is where God wanted me to be.” 

After hearing that, it changed my whole outlook on life. She opened my eyes to show me that I complain about being three hours away from home when there are other people here who are farther away from their homes.

As each week goes on, I look forward to Thursday afternoons to pack up and head home for the weekend. I think about all my friends who are far away from their homes. They don’t get the opportunity to just get up and go whenever they want to go see their family and friends for the weekend.

At first, when I was looking into schools, I wasn’t worried about what kind of education I was going to get from the school, but how far away from home it was. I sacrificed being away from my family for four days out of a week when other college students from foreign countries and different states are miles away from home for weeks, even months. I came to realize that something that may seem to be a big deal to me is probably a bigger deal for someone else.

You make many decisions in life to fulfill your goals, and attending college is one of them. You will have to make sacrifices to get the education you need, even if they are hurtful ones. But in the end, it’s all worth it.

Helen Keller once said,  “Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”