One year ago, my daily routine included waking up at 6:00 a.m. and flopping back into bed around 11:00 p.m.
My current daily routine includes waking up around 10:00 a.m. and climbing up a ladder back into my bed around 1:00 a.m., hitting my head on the ceiling along the way.
One year ago, I carried my lunch around in a brown bag and ate dinner at a huge, wooden dining table with my parents and four younger siblings.
Today, I ate both lunch and dinner on a small, shaky table, surrounded by hundreds of my peers.
One year ago, I did not know how to do my laundry.
Today, I still do not know how to do my laundry.
One year ago, I received notification of my acceptance to UNC. Needless to say, it was a day of celebration.
My family and I piled into our rickety old Suburban and drove to Chapel Hill. At the time, the town still had a foreign taste to it.
When my mom asked me where I wanted to go for dinner, I didn’t have an answer or even a sense of what all of my options were. If she asked me today, I would immediately request Old Chicago’s chicken pesto mac n’ cheese.
The family opted for Mellow Mushroom. We were greeted by a statue of a mushroom dressed in a Michael Jordan jersey and a friendly waitress.
After devouring the immense amount of pizza that was presented to us, we were about ready to leave. Instead, a few servers came out of the kitchen and headed towards our table with a large silver tray. Upon hearing that I had been accepted to UNC earlier that afternoon, the kitchen staff had created a cinnamon pretzel stick dessert for me in the shape of “UNC.”
Chapel Hill has a strange way of making you feel at home no matter who you are.
And now, it not only feels like home, it is home. I have an address ending in “Chapel Hill, NC 27514.” That’s pretty darn cool.
Life is very different as a senior in high school than it is as a freshman in college. A large part of dealing with that change depends on the place in which it happens.
I don’t think there is a better place than Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
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