Which way

“The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.”

-Mark Caine

 

      The biggest decision of my life so far was undoubtedly where I was going to go to college. Being smart and hard working was always supposed to be beneficial, but in this case it results in having way too many options so I’m not entirely sure just how helpful it really turns out to be. There are so many universities to choose from, even just within the United States. Throughout my high school career, I received countless emails and pamphlets in the mail from different schools across the country informing me about their university. This can get extremely overwhelming for anyone, but especially for someone who is just a kid.

Now I tend to be a couple steps ahead of my peers, so I had been thinking about this decision for quite some time. How long exactly? My entire life. That’s right, the second I was old enough to know what college was, I began looking into it. One day, I came home from school when I was in fourth grade and told my parents that I was going to go to Penn State University. They were shocked that I even knew anything about college and by the fact that I was already thinking about where I was planning on going, since making that decision was still years away. Not to mention, I grew up in Florida so it seemed extremely strange to them that I had come up with a random school in Pennsylvania when I had never even been there before. Nonetheless, they did not say anything along the lines of absolutely not or that I was being unreasonable. They supported me and encouraged me every step of the way.

Fast-forwarding a bit, it is now nearing the end of my freshman year of college, and here I am attending Penn State University. My parents could not be any more proud of me, and I could not possibly be happier anywhere else. I am fully confident that choosing Penn State, even though it is a great distance from home for me, was the best decision I have ever made. Most of my classmates from my graduating class in high school chose a school not far from home. They decided to remain in the state of Florida, where many of them were born and raised. They will probably continue to spend the rest of their life right where they have spent it up until this point. I quickly knew that this was not even an option for me. I know and understand just how important is to leave your environment sometimes in order to really grow as a person and become successful in life. I took the initiative and refused to be restrained by the only surroundings I had ever known. And I am so happy that I stepped out of my comfort zone, no matter how difficult it feels to do so at times.