It sounds cliche, but Mizzou really is my "Home Away from Home". As a first semester freshman, I wasn't 100% sold on the school and even questioned my future here a few times, but I could not be more happy with my decision to stay here.
Because, the longer you stay at Mizzou, the more you realize that it offers the ideal college experience that so many people-myself included-dream of.
We have the academics, the social scene, the sports, and so much more. You want to join a club devoted to mental health advocacy that doesn't care if you're not a psych major (like I did)? You can do that. Want to watch one of the best wheelchair basketball teams in the country tear up the court? Just hop over to the rec. Want to meet a guy with the most school spirited bow tie collection you'll ever see? Just pop into the new Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin's office.
Our campus is the most walkable of all the state schools I've ever visited (and the list is pretty extensive), and we offer over 280 different degree programs. Also, we were recently ranked the best journalism school in the country by NewsPro-RTDNA (Radio Television Digital News Association), and the article that broke the news is what inspired this blog entry.
Apparently, I love Mizzou enough to defend this title via a Facebook comment thread for almost two hours.
See, it all started with some bragging. I shared the article on the Facebook walls' of two of my friends, both of whom go to journalism schools that were ranked below Mizzou's on the list (#2 Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and #4 Syracuse's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications). The debate was all in good fun but got pretty heated, eventually stooping to the level of comparing party school status and athletic successes. But hey, at least we can all agree that we love our schools.
Long story short, this made me realize something very important: why stay at a school that you don't love?
My family has experienced this first hand as of recent, since my brother just transferred from the University of Kansas (thank god...tigers and jayhawks have a hateful history, for those of you who aren't aware) to a school closer to home. Century-old college rivalry aside, my brother just didn't enjoy going to school there, plain and simple. So he left. And good for him.
If you're going to invest 4+ years and hundreds of thousands of dollars into a college education, why not enjoy yourself while you're there? I challenge every college student reading this to ponder the question of why they love their school. Is it your professors? The friends you've made? The beautiful campus? The sports teams? The lack of sports teams? Whatever it may be, I hope you can put it in words, or at least think of a defining moment when your presence at that school just seemed to make sense.
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| Katie and I rooting on our boys at the Georgia Dome |
But do I regret going? Not in the slightest.
While I stood in my amazing eighth row seats in an orange and navy dominated Georgia Dome and watched in awe as streamers poured down, celebrating a victory that I was not a part of, I initially felt the same emotion as all the black and gold-adorned fans around me: heartbreak. We deserved to win that game. It was only our second season in the SEC and we had gone nearly undefeated (let's not talk about the homecoming game and the haunting sound of the football hitting the Mizzou goal post that will forever ring in the back of my head), a record that nobody in the sports industry anticipated. The year prior, we were not only the new kids on the block but the most under appreciated team in the SEC. Nobody thought we had what it takes. But we proved them wrong this year.
It was this (almost constantly) repeated success throughout the season leading up to the championship that made me a bigger football fan than I've ever been. Typically, I'm the girl who goes to games for the social aspect, chatting with friends and wishing that I understood why people love watching men in tight pants run around and get shoved to the ground. Not anymore (thankfully).
Standing in the very spitired greek student seating section for so many wins in a row made me realize that I love football, but more importantly, I love Mizzou tiger football. Games are the one time when I truely feel a part of this enormous student body, the one time that I feel connected to every single person at this wonderful school.
So, you can probably empathize with our loss that fateful Saturday night. For a moment, as I watched the Auburn players hug and rejoice at center field, all I could think of was how cruel this world is. Cruel enough to make all of us Mizzou kids believe that we could win that game. I almost stormed out of the stadium.
Then the alma mater began to play. I held onto the shoulder of my dear friend Katie and fought back tears as I swayed and sang along with an entire section of heartbroken college students. As I turned my gaze away from the field and instead focused on the people swaying around me, I had a sort of epiphany: this is what it's all about. Win or lose, we're still a team. A family. We all shared one dream, a dream of winning the SEC Championship title, but it doesn't matter that we didn't reach that goal. What matters at the end of the day is that we all share a love for the university that we call home. We all drove past flipped SUVS and semi trucks to get to that game because we were determined to support the team that we so passionately root for every week. OUR team. The one we feel a connection with.
Isn't that what college is all about?
MIZ......
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