Hello dear reader!

If you're a college student reading this, you probably don't realize, or even care for that matter, that for high school seniors, the deadline for college decisions is quickly coming up. And with that, all my younger friends are calling me up for advice on all things college.

While talking to them, I came to remember the person I was when I was in their shoes last year, and realized that even though I have only been in college for a year, I've  already changed so much.

Probably the biggest change I've noticed is that my view of what's important has altered so drastically. In high school, I would do things like study for a test merely for the sake of the grade, for the immediate future and not for anything else. But in college, it's more apparent that the responsibility to take control of your future is utterly on you. So here I've started to do things for the bigger picture, for the long-term, like studying to understand and learn new things, not merely memorizing for an A.

The world has widened in college, not because I came from a particularly small town, but more so because you can't go a day without coming across a new perspective, especially in a university as big as this one. Moreover, at UT, I'm constantly surrounded by the smartest people I've ever known, who relentlessly challenge me to think in completely new ways. I find that I'm always finding more of myself. This rings especially true in computer science because you're exposed to so many different fields inside of CS that you're bound to discover a passion you never even knew you had.

And there's the little things too. As a high schooler, I would have died of embarrassment at the thought of eating alone, but now it's nothing. I actually relish it as a way to tune out the world for a few minutes. And also, promptly doing the dishes because sure, there's no one there to nag you about it but mold doesn't care about newly discovered freedom.

It's funny to think that I didn't really think I'd change in college. And it's not until I took a good long look back that I realized I did. Because it's true: day by day it all looks the same, but when you look back everything has changed.


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