The college experience

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- In college there is so much freedom

in terms of time, scheduling.

- You're not only choosing
your own schedule,

but you're choosing what
classes you want to take,

what classes you don't want to take.

- Around the time of freshman orientation

we were given these booklets
with hundreds of courses

that you could take from
dozens of different departments

and programs and I thought
it would be a good idea

to just grab a highlighter and
go through every single page

and mark up every class that
sounded remotely interesting

and at the end of this, when
I got to the end of the book,

I probably had about
60 courses highlighted.

Concepts of the cosmos,
sociology of the school,

race in American, U.S. education.

- The cool thing about college is

that any given point, in any given day,

you're going to run into
a really amazing person

who's going to blow your
mind about something

that you haven't thought about.

- The support system is amazing.

All the kids here are so passionate

and they're so into their learning.

I think that's what I find
different than high school.

I'm not the one that's pushing and pushing

and everybody else is just satisfied

with doing what they need to graduate.

- The students actually want to be there.

That's a big difference
than high school to college.

Everybody is really friendly.

There's not as much clicks.

Everybody is just cool,
nice, you can talk to anyone.

That's the best thing about college.

- Just being exposed to
new ideas, new people,

new cultures.

It's completely mind changing.

- I work three jobs.

I work at the admissions office,

I work for my cultural center,

and I work at my residential college.

I studied abroad twice.

Once in Madrid and once in London

and I've had two internships,

one in Minneapolis and one in Alaska,

and over the course of
all these experiences

there have been several instances

where I'm just like I cannot
believe how radically different

my life is now than it was before.

- Because it's fun to look at Shakespeare

when you're actually in London

or it's fun to be able to dream something

and then work for it
and then see it happen.

- I cannot believe,
everyday I am so surprised

by how much I have grown
since I was in high school.

When I was in high school and
I was looking at colleges,

I had no idea how I was going to fair.

I didn't know how I was going to succeed.

It seemed like this big thing so far away

that everyone else was
in on except for me.

I really found myself and I know who I am

and I'm just so excited by continuing

this intellectual journey.

It's just something that's
very exciting to me.

- Basically, it has allowed
me to dream much bigger,

and not only dream much bigger,

but also realize that those dreams

are very possible as well.