Growing Up by Tristen
Tristenof Mount Pleasant's entry into Varsity Tutor's November 2016 scholarship contest
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Growing Up by Tristen - November 2016 Scholarship Essay
College is an incredible experience for so many people, and the beauty of it is that the reasons that make each experience memorable are as unique as the people that experience it. It’s a privilege to be able to attend a university. In an era when it is becoming increasingly more difficult to pay for school, those who are lucky enough to be able to pay for it often do not realize the opportunity they have been given and are not thankful enough for it. I am thankful for many things about my college experience, but the thing that I am most thankful for has been the environment it has provided to become my own person.
As children growing up in their parent’s home, people tend to take on the personas, views, and lifestyles of those that raised them. I am not excluded from this group, but hey, I was a kid, I didn’t know any better, I just copied what mom and dad did. As these people grow up they are able to become truer versions of themselves. With increasing freedoms and responsibilities everyone is forced to grow up, whether they want to or not and at different speeds. After 13 long yeas of education, and after graduating high school, some people are able to start their adult lives right away, getting full time jobs and housing. They become fully independent, functioning members of our society. Others, such as I, are not headed along that path and the next step for most is giving college “the ol’ college try”.
The college environment is special in the fact that it is a transition, a transition from childhood into adulthood that happens over the course of 4+ years. This transition aspect of college is what I believe is the most important. Students are given more and more freedoms and responsibilities as they continue towards independence. There are countless numbers of views, religions, morals, and lifestyles that are all crammed together and constantly interacting on a college campus. It allows students to develop and mature into the person that, eventually, will be the basis of their being. Each experience is different, and each person is able to value the uniqueness in their own unique way, but for me, it has given me a platform to find the real Tristen.
This platform has allowed me to create my own views and morals, to set the career path that I want to follow (as undecided as I was at times), to find what I believe in and what I think is important. It allowed me to learn how to functionally live on my own, going from on-campus residence halls to an apartment, consuming more pasta, eggs, and fast-food than I would care to admit. It allowed me to gain an immense amount of knowledge in areas of study that I truly enjoy (bye, bye English class), and meet friends that share these interests along the way. And, while on the ideas of friends, college has allowed me to make the closest friends I’ve ever made, whom I will try to keep in my life as long as possible. It has allowed me to mature from the tweaky high school graduate that entered the college world into the man I was destined to become. It has allowed me to be, to live, to laugh, and to love.
Over my college years (which, luckily, are not over yet) I have truly been able to become my own person. Not to say that I won’t change, because I have no doubt that I will, but I can safely say that I have been able to become a infinitely unique, intelligent, responsible individual, and I have my college experience to thank for that.