So much of UT’s campus has been transformed since my first semester in the fall of 2007: the mailroom was across the hall from Fletcher Lounge, there wasn’t a flagpole in Plant Park, and there were parking lots and cubicles for UT faculty—if I remember correctly—where the chapel stands.
Three years of graduates, three incoming classes. Even minor things—a new paint job in Plant Hall, fresh flowers in front of John Sykes—leave their indelible mark on the landscape.
I came here not only to further my education but to seek out experience. I didn’t know what experiences I looked for—I couldn’t tell you now either, but I’ve found them. The eighteen-year-old graduate fleeing the boondocks of Niceville would be nearly unrecognizable to me now.
Thank God.
Many freshman embrace the newness of college life, but just as many are averse to change. They hang onto the past or simply try to float through the next four years of life. Some of my high school friends were like that; I was like that too.
The pull of high school memories and loyalty to those friendships was, perhaps, one of my biggest hang-ups. I tried to stay connected to those friends via Facebook, and it worked for a while. Unfortunately, as the years progress, a lot of those relationships inevitably fade—not by any fault of the friends, but it’s just natural when you’re physically out of each other’s lives for most of the year.
Don’t forget those relationships; you spent four years developing them, but don’t foreground the past to the point that you block out the present.
Now is the time to refine yourself. Many will tell you, your college years will change your life, which is true, if you let it.
The changes can be something as major as breaking out of your shell and stepping up to become an active participant of campus life, more often than not it’ll be something inconsequential or imperceptible, something as simple as discovering your own sense of style or breezing through campus with a certain confidence. This is why I like to think of the college experience as refining the self rather than changing it.
I said earlier, my younger self would be unrecognizable to me now, which isn’t exactly true. I’m still the same quiet, sweet guy, just better—yes, I’m more confident and smarter than I was, but I’ve also discovered simple things like the joys of Indian food and a good pair of leather shoes.
But it’s the subtler changes that are sometimes the most rewarding, things you won’t even notice until others point them out to you.
I came to UT knowing that I’d get a degree in four years, but that would be the least of my accomplishments. If after four years I left with little more than a piece of paper, my time would have been spent in vain.
Seek out new experiences, refine yourself. When you enter your senior year, walk around campus and take notice of what’s changed—then take that measure of yourself. How have you changed? It could be as obvious as a chapel in the middle of campus, or small and private as a new patch of goldenrods by the mailroom.
Derrick Austin can be reached at daustin@spartans.ut.edu.