The road less traveled: a first year looks back

In coming to Kenyon, I "took the [road] less traveled." As a first-generation Mexican-American student from Dallas, Texas, I had no prior prior connection to the school besides my admissions director, Travis Culver, who brought me here to visit the fall of my senior year. I undoubtedly loved it then, but when I came to visit back in May with my parents, I was not so sure. They hated it and could not understand why I had decided to live on the Hill for the next four years of my life. They felt that its size and location were too small and confining. Eventually, they said, I would come back home, missing everything I had left behind.

Midway through my first semester here, they were right.

Yet, fast forward nearly a year later, and they are wrong. Kind of. I have grown fond of Kenyon and have learned to love it, imperfections and all. It was nothing like I expected but everything that I needed.

I say that because life on the Hill is exactly that-a hill. It has its ups and downs, and even a few plateaus here and there, but it always brings you back to the same place-home. Kenyon, through its small, rural setting, challenged me to think about my performance inside and outside the classroom every day. Granted, it was uncomfortable at first, but I have embraced it since then.

My readiness to embrace it, though, did not come easily. It required me to open up and share my feelings with people that hardly knew me. So I spent countless hours talking to professors, administrators and new friends about their adjustments here at Kenyon and how they did it. A few had no problems, but many, I realized, had experienced or were experiencing the same thing that I was. It was heartwarming because I realized that I was not alone, and most importantly, that I was not going to feel the same way forever.

Kenyon, in that respect, "has made all the difference" for me. Despite its flaws, my experience here have been unparalleled. In two semesters' time, I have eaten at professors' homes, babysat their kids, made friends of a lifetime, fixed my car far more times than I would have liked, lost too many things I eventually found, volunteered with incredible children and changed my overall perception of things. Being nestled here on the Hill with 1,600 other students from different walks of life challenged me to learn something new every day. It opened corners of life that I never knew existed and above all, forced me to know myself. Which is what college is all about, isn't it? While I definitely regret not having spent more time on that paper, I think it is fair to say that all of us here just want to understand ourselves a little more at the end of the day. Outside of Kenyon is a real world that requires that self-understanding for our own success. And while that road may be tough, it is one that will be worth taking in the end. After all, it was the road we were meant to take.