My Yellow Brick Road to College

By Katyayani Jhaveri

“College is the best time of your life.”- Anonymous
“The freshmen bring a little knowledge in and the seniors take none out, so it accumulates through the years.” – A. Lawrence Lowell (Former President of Harvard University)
“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain

When Dorothy started her journey down the Yellow Brick Road in the Wizard of Oz, she had no idea what direction it would take her in. She knew only that it would take her to her goal. What am I thinking as I start this next big step in my journey of life? What should I be thinking as I begin my first semester of college? I have absolutely no idea what to expect! Should I pay extreme attention in class and work on papers well in advance so that I don’t get sucked into a vortex of late nights spent at my laptop and countless cups of coffee? Should I lay back and let the experience come to me? Should I be out partying till two in the morning? All the definitions of a good college experience that I have heard are so different that basically I’m walking into a room with my eyes closed. I am feeling excited, nervous, scared, and ecstatic – all at the same time.

I will bet that almost all of the incoming college freshmen from all over the country are feeling exactly what I am! I feel like I need to start running as soon as I reach campus – doing research, working with professors, finding internships, but how can I do this when I literally can’t even find my way around campus? I’m scared that I will be left behind in this race to come in number one, with the highest GPA and best jobs waiting after graduation. And yet I have no time to waste. How can I know exactly what job I want to do four years from now? I know I love to read and I love to write and that I want to be a journalist, right now, but the earth rotates 365 times a year around its axis. That’s 1460 rotations! What if I change my mind by then? How will I cope with all this? I really don’t know.

I can’t wait to join the Tarheels at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am extremely excited! I want to join The Daily Tarheel newspaper, the Ek Taal dance team, the Student Environmental Action Coalition. And this is just a list of things that I want to do based on what I already enjoy doing. I’m sure that after spending a few, short weeks exploring the UNC campus there will be an even longer, way more elaborate list of extracurricular activities that I will want to join. How will I ever find the time to do all this?

We have all heard the phrase: “college is about discovering who you want to be for the rest of your life”; now I’m going to find out if it’s true. I know my goal too, but it’s the journey that I’m skeptical about.