A long, long time ago, I went to a college night at my high school. I remember crowded hallways peppered with calls of "Where're you going next?" between sessions and crowded classrooms with presenters occupying the space where our teachers usually stood.
In retrospect, there was a very good chance that everyone else in that room knew much more about this whole process than I did. Pretty ironic given my post-college choice of profession.
That night, the presenter from Bucknell talked about a lot of things, I'm sure. The thing I remembered most clearly, though, was something called a Jan Plan. This was in the days before internships became as ubiquitous a part of college as dorms and meal plans, and the flexibility of that month off between semesters (more than that, really, as it piggy-backed onto Christmas break) was the selling point that made me apply. Early decision, no less. (Did I mention I had no idea what I was doing?)
I got in.
The next thing I remember about this process is lying on my bed in my childhood bedroom, paging endlessly through the catalog. We had paper catalogs back then -- big, thick books of course offerings that made it seem as though anything was possible. As a college instructor now, I appreciate the convenience of online offerings, but it's not the same -- not at all. Opening that catalog as a high school senior was like opening a door to my future, with so many paths leading in so many directions. Some I knew I would never take, but there were so many others! It was simultaneously thrilling and overwhelming.
I eventually settled on a three-course grouping that left me room for only one other course. I chose "baby bio" (bio for non-majors that fulfilled the science requirement) which ended up being a pretty good choice. Today, though, all I remember is a big room with the professor at the front on the stage. I don't remember his name and I'm sure he never knew mine. I chickened out of French, somehow believing that all the other freshman would be more fluent than I was.
As it turned out, that would be one of my few regrets.
I did all of this having never seen the campus, except in pictures. If the campus itself was a selling point then (as it well could have been because it's beautiful), I no longer remember. I do remember cresting the hill just before the turn-off to campus on our very first visit, though, and not because of the view.
That was the moment when the enormity of it all hit me. On very little information, I'd committed to spending the next four years of my life on a campus I'd never seen on the strength of a single element from a single presentation.
If that doesn't make me the poster child for the teen brain, I'm not sure what would.
Many years later, I still remember that panic. I asked my parents what we'd do if I hated it. My father, who'd already written a check for the deposit committing me to the class of -- never mind -- very calmly replied, "Then you'll go somewhere else."
Two minutes later, the campus came into view. My dad's reassurance (exactly what I needed in that moment, as in so many others that would follow not just in college, but in life), coupled with the view and everything I discovered on that campus visit (none of which I now remember) sealed the deal.
As it turned out, I didn't spend four years there but, rather, six. After earning a BA in psychology, I took advantage of a scholarship and stayed for two more years, earning my MS in education.
Despite my utter lack of planning and dearth of understanding of the enormity of the process I was pursuing, I got a happy ending. My undergraduate years at Bucknell lived up to every promise of college I could have imagined and then, as a graduate student, I got to stay in a place I loved, and expand my experience to include the town that surrounded Bucknell -- the place that became my home between college and the real world.
My time at Bucknell shaped me personally and intellectually, creating a framework for the college experience that I'd return to when my daughter began her college search, and when I began my second career as a college instructor. My daughter's approach to the college process was more thoughtful than my own -- it was a different time -- but she, too, ended up on a beautiful campus.
One where the admissions office still had paper catalogs.
I enjoyed the college visitation process much more than she did. For me, the pressure was off, and every campus potentially held the promise I felt when I opened that Bucknell course catalog as a high school senior. I tried to bring my father's logic and calm to the process, but it was sometimes hard to keep my thoughts to myself. I wanted her to find what I'd be lucky enough to stumble into: a place where she could learn, grow, and look forward to coming back to long after finals were over.
Yesterday, she got an email from her alma mater inviting her back for an event later this month. She was excited to share the news and had determined to attend practically before closing the email, delighted by the opportunity to return to the place that had been her second home.
Our college experiences echo far beyond the four (or more) years we spend there. They teach us, they shape us, and they linger in our hearts and minds as we move forward beyond those hopeful years into futures their catalogs could only hint at. If we're lucky, we learn as much outside the classroom as in it, and we make connections that still make us smile decades later.
It doesn't much matter how we arrived. It matters much more what we did after we got there.
And what we made of it thereafter.
