“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” –Oscar Wilde
In order to truly live, you have to do things you have never done. You have to get your heart stomped on and kicked across the room. You need to lose and find yourself over and over again. You have to get the wind knocked out of you in order to appreciate what it feels like to breathe. So take more risks because even if you fail, at least you’ll have a story to tell.
When I came to college I promised myself to take every opportunity thrown my way. I promised that I would be a risk taker, and in my two years at Fairfield I have made incredible friends and built strong relationships. However I have also lost friends, people that I once thought would be in my life forever have become strangers. Since being here I have opened my heart to an incredible amount of people, and while I have been disappointed I have also been pleasantly surprised. Sometimes the people you don’t expect to be there when things get tough are actually the first ones at your side. Without the heartache and disappointment, you never learn to appreciate all the good things.
In the next two semesters, my friends and I will undergo our toughest challenge to date: studying abroad. We will be living in countries we have never even visited and will all be experiencing differnt things. It is going to be the time of our lives, however it will also be the first time living in a country other than the United States (for most of us). Those of us traveling to non-English speaking countries will even experience the challenges of the language barrier, but this is what life is about. After all, opportunities like this only come along once in a lifetime!