College Dropout?

*disclaimer. I debated about listing out any of the schools but decided it was reasonable to list the school I had previously attended. While I will not be saying where I currently attend... I will eventually list it!

Where to begin? 

My last post is titled The Beginning but I find myself in a writers block when it comes to starting this one.

So then why write about it?

I find myself wanting to blog about my life. I've been thinking about what in my life would be major enough to write onto the web forever. Obviously, college (the last 4 years of my life) is a pretty huge part of this blog. College is what is consuming me and has been for a while. But, I didn't start off at the school in which I'll be receiving my degree in seven months from. No, instead I started off at a school 2 hours away.

But a lot of people transfer! Isn't that what you're proving?

Well yes, a lot of people transfer. But, I'm not like most people. I do though, want to tell my story. Because it's not a typical one and I want a lot of people to learn a valuable lesson. One in which is, that when you're not happy about a situation, there's always a way to improve it.

High School

I find it only fitting to begin here. Junior year of high school is when you being to get your stuff together and start thinking about your future; what you want to do, where you want to go, and where you see your life in the next 5 years.

lil Tiff

Sophomore 

From my sophomore year of high school, I was a part of the technology department of my school. By senior year I was president of the Tech Club (not as geeky as you would think) and I was madly in love with broadcasting (behind-the-scenes and everything involved with it). It was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life! I knew what I wanted to do, next step was to find a school to pair.

Junior 

Junior year, my mom showed me a college where one of her coworker's daughters had went, Ithaca College. I started to look into Ithaca and fell so in love with this school. I then went to visit and I can tell you that I have never been in love with a city as much as I did this one. But, Ithaca is a private school, which means that its tuition is about double a public college so I decided to at least keep my options open.

Senior

My grades (SAT and GPA) were amazing and I decided to apply to three schools. My first choice been Ithaca, my fallback was Oswego State, and if I was to not get into those two my final option was Fredonia State. I got into Fredonia first, then Oswego, and finally the school I had been waiting for Ithaca sent me my acceptance letter. Ithaca probably answered me in February, I don't really remember, all I remember is that it was snowing and that I had gotten out of work and my mom handed me the letter. From that second until a week before decision day, I was going to Ithaca. That is until I got my financial aid package which was nothing. I was getting nothing from them, where to go to Oswego or Fredonia, it would be half of the price.

My senior year as a talent on our morning show.

The Decision

I decided that in the long run Oswego was the school for me. I knew some people that were already there and some people that I had from high school were going there too. I was going to be a broadcast major and pretty excited. It wasn't until I was a week out from leaving for move in that I got insanely nervous. Did I really want to go away to school?

Oswego 

This section will be my freshman and sophomore year combined. I will not mention names and I will only be brief and explain my feelings.

Throughout all of high school, education came easy to me. I graduated Cum Laude with an advanced diploma. My anxiety was seen whenever I had difficulty but it never really showed that much. 

Welcome freshman year of college. I was struggling and badly. Wtf was studying? I didn't know how to do any of this. Between my first year of college, I was in jeopardy of not being able to take my core classes because of a GPA requirement. 

But why? I was focused heavily on my social life. While I'm looking back, I don't see myself as "the party animal". Yes, I would go out and have fun but not excessively and very rarely not on the weekend. 

My anxiety was also getting worse. I wanted to be home constantly, and with how poorly I was doing in class, I just wanted to be home more. 

Did you have any friends? God yes did I have friends and god were they amazing. To this day, I am grateful for those friends that I made and everything that they had done for me throughout those first two years of college. As I would be crying in my bed wanting to go home they were right beside me comforting me. 

Every time I would have to go back to Oswego, after a break or a weekend home, I didn't want to go back.

Towards the course of my first year, I knew broadcasting wasn't what I wanted to do in life. I couldn't see myself doing it. I met with a counselor there and they walked me through finding the perfect career for me. Public Relations is what popped into my mind and I started looking into it.

My friends were really into makeup and it stuck to me.
This is the makeup look that one of them did on me.

While I was making my fall semester schedule, I didn't know what I wanted to do. A lot of different majors I suggested, I knew I could just come home for school and it would be cheaper. I decided that I would explore PR and if I liked it, then I would change my major the following year.

My sophomore year, we were supposed to stay in the same rooms with the same roommates (I was friends with my roommate and two neighbors). During the summer one of my friends decided that she didn't want to do this and got a room in a suite room. The three of us trying to decide what to do, decided to live in a triple (which was a regular dorm but a little bigger to fit more). 

Sophomore year of college, I dyed my hair back to its natural color.
It was blonde since sixth grade.

This arrangement was fine. In the beginning of the semester my two friends decided they wanted to live off of campus which I knew I couldn't afford. Of course this made me upset because I knew that things would be different and I wouldn't be seeing my two best friends every day anymore. 

I decided to explore moving transferring to a school closer to home. I applied and I got in! I was really debating about leaving but decided to go back right before my junior year. 

My junior year, I was originally supposed to be living in the same dorm as one of my friends that was a year younger than me in the same building as my best friend to this day. My roommate wasn't going to come back the following year and that with my best friend going home every weekend, I decided to live with a friend of a friend in a building that was in central campus.

Junior year is when I began to love makeup the most.

From the second I moved in, while not wanting to go back to begin with, I knew it wasn't right. The girl I was living with wasn't fitting with me and just everything didn't seem right. My grades were amazing, I just wasn't happy. 

A couple weeks into the school year, one of my best friends from high school passed away. It seemed like everything about me was off. I was spending time in my room, by myself. I was by myself a majority of the time. I felt like I had no friends in school and what kind of life is that? My anxiety and depression had hit it's all time low. I wasn't happy and it was obvious. I also didn't know what to do. I felt like my walls every day were closing in.

Leaving

To write this down is hard. It's also confusing so please be patient.

I want to begin this section with an apology to any of my friends reading this. I didn't leave with a proper goodbye, but had I said one leaving would have been a lot harder than it was to begin with.

After an incident (my shoe literally broke in a bar and I made way too big of a deal about it than it was), piled on top of everything I had been going through over my month of school, I decided it was only necessary to leave school and as soon as I possibly could.

I woke up on a Sunday and knew I wanted to leave, I told my roommate and the next morning I called to figure out how I could. I was transferred to the woman that would forever change my life for the better. Over my phone call with her, she could tell that I was in distress and asked if I needed anyone at the time. We made a time to meet and decide the process of leaving. Looking back, meeting and speaking with her was exactly what I needed at that time. She helped out a little girl that seemed like the world was beating her while she was down.

 At the moment, I was taking two online classes. We decided it wouldn't hurt to keep those and withdraw from my classes on campus. I had to meet with the head of financial aid which was a hassle and a bunch of information later which I don't even know if I can explain. I was going home, the day my mom came to pick me up, we met with financial aid and they told me it looked like the world was lifted off my shoulders.

I drove my car home after packing which took an hour, and I have never felt so free in my life. I had no plan for the future and knew I wouldn't be graduating as expected. I just knew that what was deterring me at the moment was finally gone. I didn't say a goodbye to my best friends besides one, and I was preparing to do so when I got home. I've decided I don't want to talk about that further because it's not my story to tell and if things could be done differently, I would. But I can't time travel so I can't change anything. I'm sorry, but at the end of the day, the hardest part for me was leaving. Putting myself first and trying to better myself.

My first picture from home

Now

To look back the year, I can't believe how much has changed. But for now, I'm beyond happy with the memories that were made and the people that helped me through the hardest times. 💕