College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota
Twin Cities Campus
101 Pleasant St SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Sarah's Blog
My Big Adventure
It is strange for me to think that in the spring of 2004, the year I graduated high school, all I thought I wanted was to live a grand adventure. It seemed I needed to go to school far, far from home or spend a year backpacking through Europe or live two months on a remote desert island. It didn't matter what the adventure was, I just felt I needed something extraordinary, something almost tangible to prove my independence and rite of passage into adulthood.
Needless to say, fear of the unexpected got the best of me and I decided to go to school 30 minutes from home, and until recently, the farthest I'd managed to backpack was the U of M East Bank, a trek I now make daily. What I couldn't anticipate in the spring of 2004 was that moving out of my parents' home or navigating my way through my freshman year of college were going to be adventures in and of themselves. I didn't realize at the time that college is an adventure no matter where you go to school and the opportunities to travel Europe or visit a remote island can happen while pursuing a degree. The fact that I will be graduating from college with a bachelor's degree and graduate school in the future is proof that I am (slowly, but surely) entering adulthood.
Moreover, it appears as though I will be getting the opportunity to live the "adventure" I envisioned four years ago, but at a time when I feel prepared to take it on. I am in the process of preparing for a global seminar in which I’ll study in Cuernavaca, Mexico in the middle of May.
But fear won’t be getting the best of me this time. I feel confident that the preparation and lessons I've learned from a different adventure-that of going to college and living on my own-has prepared me for the unexpected events of my Mexico travels. I no longer yearn for proof of adulthood. In fact, I love it when my mom does my laundry or lets me go grocery shopping in her cupboards. But, I am pleased to realize that I can still have the adventure my aspiring self envisioned four years ago with the security in knowing I have nothing to prove to myself. College was the adventure, studying abroad will be an incredible experience.
