COLLEGE COURAGE BY SARAH JENKINS
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t is often said that someone will not realize the true nature of their environment until they escape from it - whether momentary or enduring. For a college student, this comes in the form of breaks, the beautifully packaged present awaiting students each December and May. Speaking as a senior in college, I’ve seen many of these breaks come and go. Sometimes they’ve been characterized by trips to see family and other times by day trips to visit friends in nearby cities. Most of them by the return to my job in the local mall. However, most recently, my senior year winter break was characterized by none of those. In an effort to embrace my fleeting and final moments of home prior to graduation, I chose days with wide-open agendas and no pre-planned trips. I rested and reflected, and there’s a whole lot that came into focus. As I sat in my childhood bedroom in the small beach town that raised me, I realized the simple power of looking back at where I have been to propel me into the gleaming light of where I hope to go. On my morning runs, I passed my middle school, a building that taught a timid yet quietly fierce Sarah seeking her voice in such formative years. She didn’t know her path for life but was fervent in her quest to find it; she immersed herself in varying genres of clubs on campus in desperate hopes of finding her niche. While middle school Sarah wasn’t aware that age 14 was only the beginning of that journey (and that she had a LONG way to go), she still searched.
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