This past summer I realized that I really loved the Twin Cities, which was rather inconvenient as I was preparing to go to school in London for a year, and then New York for the next three. I was of course excited for this, but not as much as it seemed I should be, and there was so much cool stuff at home. Maybe I would have been fine going to the University of Minnesota, maybe I made all the wrong choices. Was I just spending a ridiculous amount of money to go off on some adventure that I couldn't seem to be able to really get excited for? I wanted to go to London, I've wanted to travel for ages, a few months before I had been seriously considering applying to some universities in Edinburgh because all the smallest bits of British life captivated me. (I was one of those teenage American girls) Or something. But now that it was really happening, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how to move away to college, much less to an entirely foreign city. Everything would change, and it seemed like nothing really registered with me. I just kept on explaining to people how I was going to NYU -in London- for my freshman year, the whole year, just the year, yes, freshman year, it's an option they had with the program I'm in, it seemed like it'd be cool, I was very excited and everyone was just SO excited for me. That was probably the biggest thing that convinced me I was doing the right thing. Everyone, especially adults, seemed to be unable to stop telling me how excited they were for me, what a great time I was going to have. "To be 18 in London" is an approximation of the words my math teacher used. How wonderfully fantastic. This was it. This was my chance to travel, to adventure. What better time? These four years are my chance to do stuff like this. Where better than London and New York for the bases of my adventures? Minneapolis is a great city, one where I could see myself living after I finish college. I could live in the Twin Cities for the rest of my life. And I'm not going to throw around words like "once in a lifetime" or "never again" because I don't have any idea what the future will be. But as far as opportunities come, this one is pretty spectacular.
