The love story of “Badger Hat Girl” and UW-Madison
If you were to take a look through my family’s old photo albums, or I guess Shutterfly albums, you would see pictures of me wearing Wisconsin Badger shirts, hats and even onesies before I was even old enough to read the words on them. My mom recalls me exclaiming at a Badger football game, “This is where I want to go!” when I wasn’t even out of elementary school. I wore a Badgers hat everywhere I went for a solid four years of my life, so much so that I was dubbed “Badger Hat Girl.” This seemed to always be my destiny. Why would I want to go anywhere else?
Everyone around me knew my plan was UW-Madison. So when my peers started talking about the stress of applying to colleges, I wasn’t too worried because I knew I wasn’t going to apply to 10 or 12 of them. I had my eyes on the prize. However, talking about colleges inevitably came with the conversation of, what’s the best college we could get into? Side note: I was valedictorian of my high school. That became pretty clear around this time of the story because I already had a bit of a GPA gap over #2 and everyone knew. Applying to anywhere else wasn’t on my radar, but after hearing my classmates and friends’ constant chatter of “Elizabeth could get into Harvard!” and “Elizabeth doesn’t need safety schools, Yale is her safety school,” some thoughts were put into my head. Where could I get into? I never was a kid who dreamed of the Ivies and prestigious schools, but I started to think about them. I’m a big mountain biker and my idol is the 2018 World Champion, Kate Courtney. I knew she went to Stanford, which also happens to be in California, my birth state. Stanford started to get on my radar. Within a month, I was following all their socials, looking into their bike team, and begging my parents to take a trip out there for my Thanksgiving break.
We did it. We made the trip and walked around campus. I won’t downplay my excitement, I was in awe every minute I was there. I was so in love with the idea of going to college in California that we even went to UCLA and USC to walk around. We went back to California on spring break my senior year after I had applied to those three California schools as an “Oh maybe I’ll go if I get in and get good scholarships,” but after getting an official tour of USC and meeting with some old California friends, I really wanted to go to college on the West Coast. So when April rolled around and I got three rejections from the three California schools, my acceptance into UW-Madison didn’t feel like much to celebrate. I committed to UW in what felt like a last resort, but I tried to act happy. It didn’t help that one of my close friends talked every minute of his acceptance to Washington University. I couldn’t go five minutes without hearing, “Did you know WashU is known as the hidden Ivy?” or that it “was voted best dorms in the nation.” For a while, I felt bad that I was anything but happy for him, until it turned into statements like, “Hopefully you can find a way to transfer somewhere better!” and “I feel really bad that you’re ending up at UW after all the work you put into Stanford.” Now, in my right mind, I’d realize it was ridiculous that anyone would feel bad for me for “ending up” at the college I’d wanted to go to since I was five, but I will admit, it did make me feel a little sorry for myself.
Those feelings carried themselves all the way to move-in day. My parents dropped me off and I was wondering if this really was where I was meant to be. Long story short: it was. There was never a moment where it clicked, it was rather many small steps in the right direction that made me feel like there was nowhere better for me. Maybe UW-Madison isn’t stereotypically every valedictorian’s dream school, but it’s this one’s dream. It was the belting of the alma mater I’ve had memorized since I was a kid. It was the first Jump Around I’d always yearned to experience in the student section. It was the new friend groups I was forming but with a few close friends from home to keep the familiarity. It was the fact that I saw Yung Gravy in person the first weekend I was here. It was learning more about UW’s amazing study abroad program and the idea that I might get to go to Europe next year. It was the joining of clubs such as UW Bike Team and Her Campus! I’ve only been here a month but I feel like I already have a lifetime of memories I could go on and on about forever. What makes it so special is that there are so many new experiences, but because this has been my dream forever, there’s an element of familiarity to everything. That is why I wouldn’t trade the world, any Ivies or even the best-rated dorms in the nation for my new home at UW.