A year ago, I had just turned 18 and was insistent that I was going to college in California. I wouldn’t hear anything else of it. I told all my friends, family, teachers and everyone else in between that the University of Southern California (USC) was my dream school. I felt destined for Los Angeles. I started a manifestation journal, scribbling “USC” dozens of times in my diaries. I even picked some random rocks from the back of my closet for manifestation purposes because I saw Natalie Biden mention on TikTok that she, too, used manifestation rocks so her grandfather would win the presidential race.
I was desperate.
Desperate to get out of my hometown, desperate to enter the film industry and desperate to become something. I’d spent all high school hyper-focused on school because I couldn’t possibly stay within a 300-mile radius of my hometown of Pingree Grove, Illinois. I needed something more. I surmised that I could potentially get into USC because I was naive enough to believe private schools give more scholarships and want out-of-state students. Fun fact: they do not.
You can imagine my complete and utter disappointment as I opened the rejection letter from my dream school in the middle of the Tampa airport. Not even waitlisted. It was heart wrenching. Of course, I never would’ve been able to swing USC on my parents’ speech therapist and production manager salaries. Still, my dream crumbled in one email.
Now a year after my college application process, it’s amazing how my life has changed entirely. So, to any high school seniors in the trenches of college application season: be open to everything because you never know where you’ll end up. I never in my wildest dreams could’ve imagined going to London for my freshman year of college. In fact, I expressly put in my NYU applications that I wouldn’t even consider going abroad for my freshman year.
However, a few weeks after getting into FSU, I received a brochure in the mail about the school’s first-year study abroad options. I flipped through it and immediately scoured the International Programs website for more information. Truthfully, I was never thrilled about Tallahassee (although FSU is a beautiful campus) and I still wanted an experience equal to moving to L.A. So, I told my parents that if I go to FSU, I wanted to do my first year abroad.
I write this now from my flat on Great Russell Street in London. My window is open, and I hear people chattering on the street while cars and trucks drive by. Somehow, in just three weeks this small flat in Bloomsbury has become home.
I just celebrated my nineteenth birthday in Cornwall, and I haven’t had a birthday in many years where I was surrounded by so many new friends. We spent the morning surfing the beach and the night at the local pub. Usually, I hate my birthday, as it brings annual existential dread and introspective reflection on my life, with additional special birthday-girl attention I don’t particularly enjoy. Yet, this year was entirely different. The pandemic seems to be dwindling and the years I spent preparing for my senior year college application season were far behind me. Looking at the Atlantic Ocean as the sun set on the first day of my last year of being a teenager, I realized this is where I was meant to be.
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