DAN QUAGLIANA
Managing Editor
Four years ago, I didn’t think I wanted to go to college.
Actually, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life at all, let alone just the next four years.
Both of my parents are teachers, and with the combination of that and going to school for 13 years, I thought that going into teaching was where I belonged.
Yeah… nope. EDU 105 made me realize my mistake real quick. Not that it was a bad class — it just wasn’t the field for me. My time as a social studies education major was over after a mere 16 weeks.
After my first semester of freshman year, career-wise, I felt like I was in the same place that I was in during my senior year of high school — adrift. I still had no idea what I wanted to do or where I should go from here.
But I wasn’t in the exact same place as I was in high school.
For the first time in my life, I had finally found a place where I felt like I belonged.
And yes, I realize how cliche that sounds. Everyone says that when they get to college. I know.
But I really felt like it was true. I know this doesn’t happen for everyone, but I went from not having any friends in high school to not even having to try to make friends here at Fredonia.
Seriously — the people who I was randomly put into the suites with in Hemingway Hall by Residence Life are still my closest friends four years later. I’ve been living with them for all four years of college, from the suites in Hemingway and Disney Halls to the townhouses on the other side of campus.
There isn’t another group of people I would choose to spend my college years with.
After another semester or two, I just became a “normal” history major, and eventually ended up adding a double major in political science.
I’m still not entirely sure what career field I want to go into, but I do know that somewhere in those fields is where I feel most comfortable, and it’s where I see myself.
I mentioned how I met my closest friends here, and that’s true — but that’s not the only family I found here.
Sophomore year, I started a job as a student worker at Reed Library. I have never had a job that has had such a positive impact on me as that one, and I doubt I ever will.
Everyone there, from the other student workers to the interlibrary loan staff to the librarians, has provided me with a place where, yes, I could earn money, but also where I felt safe enough to talk to them about anything that was bothering me in my life, free of judgment. That’s a feeling that no other place has given me.
That same year, on a whim, because I thought it would be fun and because I thought I never had a chance of winning, I ran for a position as a sophomore class representative in Student Association, and also won a write-in campaign for class president, a position that I served in for two years.
Getting to serve as the chief representative for the people that I’ve been living with, eating meals with, working with and going to classes with was by far the most rewarding experience of my college career. Getting to serve on bodies like University Senate and express students’ concerns really opened my eyes to how this school worked, and that’s knowledge that I used to connect with not only other students, but my professors, as well.
And speaking of professors, the ones that I’ve had the pleasure of taking classes with for the last four years have made an incalculable impression on my growth as a person and on the way that I see the world around me.
Earlier, I said that I saw myself going into a history or political field, but without specifically knowing which one. That confidence is due to the faculty in the history and political science departments — because of their guidance, I’m not the aimless freshman that came here in the fall of 2021.
But most important of all, about halfway through my sophomore year, I met the woman who I would fall in love with — in The Leader office, of all the unassuming places. That’ll always be the best general body meeting of my life.
I wouldn’t be the person that I am today if I didn’t go to college here. And I wouldn’t give that up for anything else.
I said earlier that I didn’t have a very good time in high school before this. And those who know me know that I don’t have a great home life, either. When I look back on all the people that I met here at Fredonia, I don’t think of them as friends, or as professors or as co-workers — I think of them as my family.