By Diana Symons

I remember my first year of college like it was thirty-one years ago. Oh, how times flies. I always knew I would go to college, somehow. My parents didn't have the money. In fact, by the time I finished high school, my mother passed away. My father wasn't someone I could ask for assistance, so I just assumed I'd get scholarships. And I did.

I worked hard in high school. I made honor roll routinely, played tennis and hockey and generally behaved myself. I took my education seriously, much to the annoyance of my sister who shared a room with me and had to listen to my manual typewriter all night while I finished up term papers. I'm not sure why I took my education so seriously because no one in my family graduated college. A few started, but no one finished. No one was really guiding me or encouraging me in any way. I just made decisions based on what I thought I should do.

After high school graduation, I had some money—social security and death benefits from my mother. It was pretty meager, but enough to pay for a room in a boarding house, kind of a Christian-style hippie place. My sister lived nearby so I didn't feel lost and alone. My plan was to go to a junior college for two years and transfer to a university after that. It was a good plan, everyone agreed. Then why was I so terrified?

During the summer before college, I more or less just hung out. It was summer and I was enjoying it, but in the back of my mind, a dark cloud began growing. I'd be starting college. That's kind of a grown-up thing. I was just a kid. I was living on my own, but I still felt inadequate to face college. The dark cloud grew bigger and bigger. I was truly terrified.

I started getting headaches— bad, blinding headaches. The kind that a bottle of Advil won't touch (not that I tried that). I passed on meeting up with my friends because I couldn't get out of bed. The funny part was, I never made the association of the headaches and my fear of college, but my sister did. She went to two years of college before dropping out to get married.

She sat me down and told me flat out that college wasn't the hell that I was making it. It was kind of like high school. You go to classes, you do homework, you take tests. I had always been a better student than she had been so, for me, it should actually be easier.

I'm sure I looked at her like she was lying. It couldn't be that easy, but she assured me that she was telling the truth. I was beating myself up for nothing. Freshmen college students were just like me. It really took me some time to believe her, but I finally did. I lay on my bed for a while trying to get my head around what she said and my headache just vanished. I've never had a headache just stop that fast before.

And you know what? She was right. I went to class, did homework and took tests, kind of like high school, but more fun. More fun because my high school had been very small and, even for a junior college, I was exposed to a much larger population to rub elbows with. I made new friends, hung out in the student union or lawn and talked about stuff.

Ironically, my two years in community college were the best. The school was somewhat isolated, being out of town quite a ways, so most people stayed on campus during the day. That meant we had more opportunity to see each other and hang out. Not that I partied much. I pulled a 4.0 and worked for it. Every semester I seemed to add another class so I worked even harder. By the time I was carrying twenty-one units, I had to back off a bit because I was trying to do too much too fast. But I loved it.

Once I hit the university, the time spent hanging out with friends was over. The school was much bigger. I never saw the same people again outside of class and the classes were harder. The idyllic days of junior college were just a pleasant memory, but one that I've always looked back fondly on.

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