So, I picked up my diploma today. My time at CCSU is officially over, and I feel fine. Better than fine I feel great. Walking around campus as a true alumni was everything I dreamed it would be! Just magnificent. It was a fast two years, yet somehow that time is so distant. Was I really a 21 year old transfer student as recent as fall 2014? That seems like 10 years ago. I was a little fish in a really big pond then. Leaving the little community college world, for an extreme experience at CCSU, in a great little city called New Britain. How did that first semester at CCSU turn into me being out of school for three months? Those two years at CCSU were truly a blast, and words can barely describe how awesome it all was. I became very comfortable in my college life, but somehow it didn’t feel awful to leave. It just felt right. The jump from 21 to 23 was a big one, and there was a part of me that wanted to freeze time, and bask in the college experience forever, but it’s also kind of nice to be off the academic hook. Real world here I come. I will get a driver’s license (in the permit stage), a job (any kind at this point), a place of my own, and I will live a happy life. We all will. Every graduate.

-Katelyn Avery