To me, college was a break . I had spent two and a half years working alongside going to school and bowling every Saturday and Sunday morning , and before that it was the same without the work . I was an introvert , with very little of a social life, but that was fine, as the person I was then couldn't deal with a social life . I think I was getting ready to crack , going to that damn hell known as high school which is a boot camp in its own way.

Then, I left for a small little college, eight hours away from home. All of a sudden the amount of responsibility decreased - keeping myself clean, my room clean, my clothes clean, and going to class and doing the assignments. Ripped out of that rut I was in, forced to grow and change. Meeting friends, and not the minor kind many people have in high school. Friends that I spend almost as much time with as I would family. Friends that get to watch the changes. I believed college was the real world, but it's not. It's even more of a bubble than it was before, as you don't need to leave the campus. The rest of the world disappeared in front of my eyes.

I am in the real world now. Sure, I have money, and my own place. But I have to work, I have so many more responsibilities, bills, and the like. The future can no longer be set aside until later, it stares me in the face every day. I'd go back to college in a heartbeat, especially since the changes that started there took until afterward to really have their biggest effects, and I'd love to spend more time there, adjusting to the person I'm becoming, being able to experiment with who I am some more...

Maybe it's just the type of school that can do it... maybe going to that state-run megacollege is what can do it...