<p>My college had a big impact on me.That was due in part to its unique structure, which no longer exists in the same form. The college I attended is VERY, VERY different now that it was back then. </p>
<p>My mom saved the first letter I wrote home. I was absolutely panicked. I felt so much less prepared than most of my classmates–and I was. When I read Sonia Sotomayer’s description of her first year at Princeton, it rang true–and I was a white, middle class kid who had gone to a suburban high school in the Midwest. I had to write more pages in my first semester of college than in my last three years of high school. </p>
<p>College was like heaven to me. I really enjoyed the academic part of college. I also made friends. I was still very different than most of my classmates–but different in a different way than I had been in high school. Being different was okay in college. It wasn’t in high school.</p>