30 more days until graduation.
Only 30 more days until I am no longer a college student. It only took me five years to get to this point, but it’s here, finally, and I’m 30 days away from receiving my bachelor’s degree in print/multimedia journalism from the University of Kentucky.
If you would have met me five years ago, I can almost guarantee you wouldn’t recognize me. Freshman year Abbie is light years different from senior year Abbie. I was a freshman at the University of Louisville, my dream school at the time. I had such high expectations for that red and black filled university. I felt it in my soul that I was supposed to end up there and was supposed to graduate in four years from there. I had everything for my life mapped out, down to the smallest detail, until God quickly laughed at me and led me to a place that I thought would never be in the cards for me.
I hated all things that I had to do with the University of Kentucky. “You’ll never catch me in that gody blue and white,” I said almost every single day prior to arriving at UofL. “I like Lexington as a city, but I would never go to school there,” freshman Abbie often said.
It seemed like just as quickly as I said that, I found myself sitting in the Grehan Journalism Building on the University of Kentucky’s campus, starting my junior year at the school that I was convinced that I had no business being at.
And now I’m 30 days away from earning my degree from this university. All I have left to say about that is, “Thank you” University of Kentucky.
If it wasn’t for this school I wouldn’t have been presented with all of the incredible opportunities that I have been able to take advantage of. I would have never been able to travel to the University of Maryland to present my undergraduate research study at a conference that was hosted by ESPNW. I would have never fallen in love with journalism and sports reporting. I would have never became the president of Her Campus UK, and I would have NEVER been set up to graduate magna cum laude.
Quite frankly I don’t know where I would be in life today if it wasn’t for this school, my professors, and all of the incredible friends I have met along the way during this rollercoaster ride that I call “my college experience.”
Thank you, UK, for blessing me in ways that I didn’t even know existed. You have turned me into the person that I am today.
But, PS: You’ll still never catch me repping that gody blue and white, except for my cap and gown.