I did my best to participate in the debauchery and depravity that is college life. In all honesty, I went to college to…you’ll never guess…get an education! Really. No one forced me to be there. There were no parental units guilt-tripping me into attending. The cocaine-toting, binge-drinking party-goers sort of swirled around my book-reading, homework-doing college self.

I am definitely not trying to paint some picture of a good girl. That, I was not. But, I was studious. And, I took college seriously because I was genuinely interested in learning. I had always loved school. As an escape from home but also as a place to learn about the big, wide world outside of my small-town life. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to experience everything.

I spent much of my high school career focused on extracurricular activities — college was the place for learning, I decided. College was the place to finally get a sense of the world around me. The history, the culture, the literature. I was a product of shitty, small-town schools, with the occasional incredible teacher but mostly a sea of small-minded, right-leaning, mostly white, mostly christian people. I was caught in the middle of the conservative reality of the town I called home and the liberal, commune ideology I’d grown up around.

College was, for me and for many others, a place where I could finally be myself. Or, rather, be the self I always wanted to be. I could shed the reputation I had earned/inherited, get labeled with all new adjectives, stick myself into the categories and groups I felt best defined me or supported me, and make all new friends. Friends who knew nothing about my background. People with whom I could start fresh.

It was exhilarating for me. Moving 3,000 miles away from where anyone knew my name was the most important gift I could have given my adolescent self. The gift of anonymity–where I could feel safe and free and normal.