University

I find University to be an amazing place. It really boggles my mind that barely over 20% of the population of our beautiful country ever get to attend. I've made a lot of friends over my time there. Some of these have been very temporary, lasting only the time it takes to complete one class. A few have lasted much longer, going from orientation day to today.

Many of these friends have either already graduated, or will be doing so at the end of this semester, others I look forward to seeing again next fall when I return to finish my schooling. It is at this point that I start to wonder if my friends from University will be like my friends from High School.

A small group of people I met in high school are still very close to me, others drifted away slowly, some I didn't hear from after graduation. Regardless of how long these friendships last, I am grateful for them now, and I try to take a minute as often as I can to appreciate how very lucky I am to have made it to University.

I struggled heavily in school, both with my grades, and with my peers. I was an odd person, and I tended to be off in my own world more often than not (gee, sound familiar?), and I had to work my way through it. Getting to university was, and is, an amazing experience for me. This is a place where you don't have to worry about people disrupting class purely because they want to get out and go home, those I study with are there because they want to study.

After years of not fitting in because I was a bit odd and creative, I have found somewhere that I fit in purely BECAUSE I AM a bit odd and creative. Carleton has become a second home for me, so I find that while I spend two hours on the bus every day, it doesn't seem to be that long. No one ever really minds going somewhere they love.

By the end of December this year, I will have completed my Four Year Honours Bachelor Degree in History, and will be getting ready to work for a year or two before I go back to do my Masters degree, and eventually my P.H.D. When I talk to my professors at Carleton, I am more and more certain that I don't ever want to finish my education.

That isn't to say that I want to become a professional student, but rather to say that I want to live my life as an academic. I want to study history for the rest of my life, play with artifacts and old documents, and write piles of journal articles about it. I want to live my life with as much learning and new information as I can. I want to talk about the past until I can't talk anymore.

I know that history doesn't appeal to everyone, and some of my friends are probably getting tired of hearing about it, but there it is. I love history and am eternally grateful for the chance to even have come this far. No matter how far I am able to take my education, my time at Carleton means the world to me, and when I finish, I know I will miss it.

Lisa