Choosing Parkside

Deciding to come to Parkside mostly came by chance.  I had gotten accepted into three other schools.  UWWC, Whitewater, and Milwaukee.  I also toured Moraine Park Technical College in West Bend because at the time I wasn't sure if I really wanted to spend four more years at school.

I toured UWWC and it was way too small, only 1,000 kids.  So I knew that wasn't the choice for me.  There wasn't really anything I wanted to go to a technical college for.  I never ended up touring Whitewater, and although Milwaukee seemed amazing it was way too expensive and had an overwhelming amount of people.

It was like April before I made my decision about what school I wanted to go to, I really didn''t know but in the end I said Parkside.  In the town I'm from, Slinger barely anyone has even ever heard of Parkside, which is probably why I've only met one Slinger High School alumni here on campus.  Parkside was also an hour and a half from home, and with a girl with anxiety that's hard to fathom.  Parkside though was only 5 minutes from my brother's campus, Carthage though.  Because of this our parents can easily visit us both now.

There was so many factors against picking Parkside: being far from home, living away from home, and not being with anyone I knew.  The first two months of college were full of so much drama and cliques, I really didn't think I had chosen the right college.  I told myself I could always transfer if I needed to.  With my anxiety though its a surprise I never chose a closer college to home.  This surprises me a lot.  I am brave.  I could of taken the easy route and lived at home and went to a college just 10 minutes away from home with a ton of people I knew from high school but I didn't.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  How I know I made the right choice, because since the end of October I have met all these amazing people at Parkside, whether that be siblings in Christ or just generally cool people.  If I would have gone to a different school I would of never gotten to meet all these people.  To be honest I don't want to live in a world where I hadn't met these people, that's how much they mean to me.  Yea school can be stressful sometimes, but there's so many people I can't wait to hang out with, and the best part I live like a 5 minute walk from all of them.