Open to the new, cherishing the old

I met with my new college advisor today. It's weird to even say "college advisor."  After my wonderful years at Baylor, I considered the "college" part of my life over. Sure, maybe one day I'd get a masters or something, but that'd be a masters and therefore not really college. 

Yet, here I am. I walked onto Idaho State's campus today and went into my new home-away-from-home and even got a brief tour of where most of my classes will be. Made me miss Baylor in so many ways, but at the same time it was nice to see a newly renovated building dedicated to a communications department. 

My new degree is really all about visual arts and photography, not writing and speech communications. Yet, it is just another Mass Communications degree. But this will be worlds apart from what I did at Baylor. My one photo course at Baylor was on my old 35mm and focused on black & white media. Everything now is done digital and will involve a ton of graphic design and Photoshop work. I (hopefully) get to skip on all the basics - English, math, sciences, literature, foreign language, etc. -  and will spend most my time doing what I love. And as a bonus (to me at least), I have to do 15 hours outside my degree in the arts and humanities. That means I get to dabble in painting or printmaking or ceramics or music or theater and have that count towards my degree. My creative juices are already bubbling up inside! 

Can you sense how excited I'm getting? Not only to gain formal training in something I love, but to refine all my skills I taught myself and to even branch out and try totally different things. Including Scuba diving. No, seriously. I'm taking a course to get certified in Scuba and skin diving for practically nothing in tuition and getting two-hours of credit.

College is fun. I'm sure my secondary college experience will be vastly different this go-round. After all, I'm not your typical co-ed. I'm almost 30 (gasp!) and married and not concerned with sorority life and student activities. I'm here for the education. I can't even get my heart into cheering for the Bengal sports teams. My heart will always belong to Baylor. I'm a bear - I bleed green and gold.

Besides, you don't see ISU being featured on ESPN commercials. Nope, that's Baylor.