If you would have asked me when I was a senior in high school if I would ever go to a college 836 miles away from home, in a small town in North Carolina, I would have nervously giggled and said, \u201cI sure hope not.\u201d<\/p>\n
I set my dreams high, as everyone always tells us to, while I navigated the whole college process in the wrong mindset. I wanted to be surrounded by skyscrapers and the constant buzz of thousands of people swarming a city street. But then, High Point University fell into my lap. Much like you probably did at first, my parents questioned if this school was truly all that it seemed to be. I\u2019ll let you all in on a little secret \u2013 it is, indeed, all that it seems to be, and more<\/em>.<\/p>\n When all of these college graduates tell you that you are about to embark on a journey of some of the best years of your life, they are not kidding. Three years ago, I was overcome with a variety of emotions, but mostly ridden with fear. My biggest fear coming into college was the fear of failure. High school was a breeze, right? You wake up, go to school and sit in classes for seven hours, go to your sports practice or job, then go home just to wake up and do it all over again. You\u2019re in a relatively stable routine, surrounded by your family and life-long friends on a daily basis.<\/p>\n Then suddenly, you\u2019re thrown into this new environment and are dreading classes starting because you\u2019re terrified of the horror stories you hear about tough college professors, or you\u2019re afraid you\u2019ll get lost on the first day. After convincing myself to break out of my shell because I was not fulfilling my college goals, I decided to run for freshman class representative for student government, in which I printed off 500 flyers that said \u201cCLOS FOR CLASS OF 2015 REPRESENTATIVE.\u201d While that flew right over some people\u2019s heads, others pointed out that we were indeed the class of 2019, not the class of 2015 since that was our high school graduation class! After I went on to lose that election, I used my loss as motivation to get involved in other things, such as becoming an RA, joining Greek life, and running the pre-law club.<\/p>\n My point here is that when I first began my college career, I viewed failing as this horrible atrocity that I was absolutely terrified of. Over my three years spent on this campus, however, I\u2019ve learned that failing allows you to do even bigger and better things. So, if I were to give your students one piece of advice, it would be to not be afraid to fail. They have nothing to lose.<\/p>\n The following blurb is from the speech I gave at convocation to the incoming class of 2022:<\/p>\n \u201cI encourage all of you to step outside of your comfort zones and challenge yourselves. You will only be here for a few years, and those years are going to pass in the blink of an eye. Take time for the little things. Talk to your professors about their lives and how they\u2019ve gotten here today. Ask the wonderful ladies at Subway how their day is going. Thank our phenomenal campus enhancement staff for all they do to keep this campus sparkling 24\/7. And lastly, thank your parents and guardians for allowing you to dive into this opportunity that will change your life. Without them, none of us would be sitting here today.\u201d<\/p>\n Parents, thank you for giving us these opportunities to fail, learn and succeed. \u00a0Your tremendous support and words of encouragement truly have an impact on all of us, and even though we may not call you every single day, please remember that we are always thinking of you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lyndsey Clos<\/p>\n Student Body President<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you would have asked me when I was a senior in high school if I would ever go to a college 836 miles away from home, in a small town in North Carolina, I would have nervously giggled and said, \u201cI sure hope not.\u201d I set my dreams high, as everyone always tells us…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6094,"featured_media":3610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_hpuaeo_plugin_post_data":"","_hpuaeo_plugin_meta_tags":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-3609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parent-blog","category-upperclassman-parents","tag-parent-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n