College application essays - we all had to do them. Some of us did them a few years back, while freshmen did so just a year ago, and students applying to grad school are currently in a similar process all over again. Go search your hard drive to see if you still have some of these essays and read them over. Have you forgotten how you did Model U.N. your freshman year or that you used to tutor elementary kids? What else did you say on these applications? "I want to make the world a better place," "I am looking forward to studying abroad," "I want to volunteer." Sound familiar? Everyone wrote things like this; we all wanted to sound like the perfect candidate for whatever college we were applying to, whether it was UB or not.
It was not farfetched to stretch the truth a little bit on these, but in these applications, there was definitely a sense of honesty about what you wanted to happen in the next four years of your life. There had to be some daydreaming of all the possibilities of what you could do. You thought you'd be in some third-world country supplying water to kids, you thought you would host fundraisers for that charity close to your heart, you thought you were going to change the world from Day 1 ... Instead, you StumbleUpon your night away, you skip class, you masturbate, gorge yourself and play Halo for hours on end. What ever happened? What happened to that bright-eyed senior in high school who couldn't wait to get to college? You said you couldn't wait to do countless clubs and activities in all of your applications; you desperately cried out to the university to choose you over some other equally experienced kid. Sure, UB may not have been your No. 1 school, but what about your dream school? Or that school that was just a tad too expensive for your family? Oh well. You didn't get to go there. That is in the past. Is that the reason you fell into this pit of despair and laziness and no longer wish to make a difference?
You are not going to have this opportunity again. Come graduation and the 9-to-5 work day (Yes, this will be you in a few years, no matter how much you idolize Thoreau and McCandless). There is no way you are going to be able to influence your community, at least nowhere near on the level you can today. Yes, today. Go out and join some students/faculty who are actually trying to help the community. Student Affairs has a webpage dedicated to service. Join Alpha Phi Omega (the national service fraternity). Stop by the Center for Student Leadership and Community Engagement. Instead of playing Xbox with your suitemates, why not go out and build a house through Habitat for Humanity with them (Circle K has been known to attend house builds quite often)?
Do you really want to be working in your cubicle in a few years and regret not making the most of your time out of college? You are going to wish you still had the credibility as a college student to be an inner-city tutor, to wish you still were in the physical shape to build a house, to wish you had the energy that you used to have. There is still time. Go out and be the person that your high school self wished you had turned out to be. Go out and be the change you wish to see in the world.
