I get college. I understand the whole idea of a freshman experience. I understand the things that administrators go through to bring to and retain students at a university. I get the advising shtick. I’m one with teaching and learning. I just get college and the whole experience here.

For the longest time, I figured that one of the things which kept me in school for so long is my obsession, my fanaticism with learning. Research, reading, studying, writing essays, doing projects, taking tests, class discussions, lectures, all of it–it’s natural, as natural as knowing how to walk or chew food or think. I was and am the eternal student. To learn is to live and to grow. I like myself better with the more I know, the more I learn. It doesn’t have to be from a book or a lecture; it can be from life experiences or conversations or chance discoveries on my own. Learning is the basic building block of my self esteem and self respect. I always figured that I am in academics because of my love for learning.

But that’s not all, as I have come to discover. Now that I am an advisor, now that I have been teaching for two years now, now that I am on committees, go to meetings, organize campus events–now that I have all of this, I realize that it’s not just learning that has kept me here. The entire environment has drawn me in, has made me realize that this all makes sense, that the administration, the advisors, the teachers, the students–that all of it–makes sense. It feels right. Sitting in on meetings about handling transfer students or joining committees to help student retention is as logical to me as working on lesson plans and grading papers.

I never figured that I would get along in a high school because of the red tape and because I knew I didn’t want to put up with that bullshit. There, the red tape is government-mandated, handed down by the hands of governor/congressman/president gods themselves. At college, the system is different. Sure, there are laws and governing principles, but the freedom to adapt, to change, to improve is so much greater, so much more vast and expansive than at the high school level. There’s so much potential at a college–not just in the students but in the way we work with the community, with other colleges, with the State. I can feel this potential when I attend meetings and take part in focus groups and organize events.

I don’t know how much of a difference I can make personally, but the potential to make a difference at all is enough to make me want to stay in academics for the rest of my life. I want to teach. I want to advise. I want to work with the administration to try and improve the lives of the students and the quality of the school. It’s so very idealistic of me to be in education at all, and the years will wear away at me like they have so many other administrators and advisors and teachers, but why not make a difference now while I still can with the goal of trying to retain this positive energy for as long as I can? I can’t think of anything else which has arrested my attention for as long as education, either mine or others, and I can’t think of much else I would want to do with my life.

I get college. And for as long as college-life will have me, I’ll be here. It’s what I want to do, what I feel made for. I’d never make it out in the “real world,” but I think I’m doing just fine right here. Why leave?