Thank you for being exactly what I needed

Looking at my graduation cap and gown hanging in the closet in front of me, I feel a lot of things.

There’s a slideshow in my head of the past four years. Of how my freshman year self feels like a different life time, yet my college career flew by in a blink of an eye. Can’t say I loved every minute of college. I’m not sure anyone can, but I wouldn’t change any of it to become who I am and where I am.

The best friends who were strangers from all over the place are now like family. My boyfriend who I met the very first day of sophomore year in that algebra class has stuck by me to this day. They’ve been my best friends, my roommates, my rock, my shoulder to cry on, and my happiest memories.

To them — thank you for being exactly what I needed and for helping me become who I am.

Every part of this town turned into home for me. From living in Montour Hall to living by the downtown fountain, to living in my sorority chapter house. The coworkers at Steph's Subs and Aramark who I shared dreadful shifts with, yet loved where we were. The peers in my major who started as someone to ask a question turned to someone to call a friend.

Home isn’t a place but a feeling, and Bloomsburg has that feeling. I’m sad to leave, but I can begin to grow a life based off of what it gave me.

Looking at my cap and gown, I think of my high school graduation — the girl I was then, starting out in the world not knowing where I’d end up.

Now I think of the girl I am now. Completing my biggest accomplishment in life thus far. Making my family proud as a first-generation college student.

I can say confidently now I'm the girl who knows exactly what she wants and has what it takes to see it through. Looking at that cap and gown, I’m proud of myself. It’s bittersweet; I’m sad, I’m happy, but most of all I’m excited for what the next stage of my life is going to bring me.

And I can thank Bloomsburg for that.

— Drew Hess, a graduating senior communication studies major and emergent media minor, interned with the Office of Marketing and Communications this spring. She is a native of Stowe, Vt., a town of 4,472 people in northern Vermont known for its trails and ski slopes.

#BloomOnward #HuskyLife

Live every day as a Husky like it's your last

One minute I was in South Beach, Miami, with my best friends. We’d been waiting for this trip all semester counting down the days. In my head it was the start of a fun rest of my final semester. I knew warmer weather was coming to Bloomsburg, and it’s always my favorite part of the year when everyone is outside the last couple months.

I spent that week with some of my very best friends from my college career, and we spent that whole week so happy and living life to the fullest. We had no clue that our time as college seniors was over.

That all took a turn as the week progressed. We found out spring break was extended and at that point like any college student we were happy. But as we found out how serious this all is and the news that we would not be returning, it felt unreal. If someone were to ever tell us, “Hey your senior year is going to end in early March.”

We probably would have done a lot of things different. We would’ve taken advantage of the times we were together more. We would’ve said yes to dinners, drives, living room hangouts- really anything, if we had known it was over.

As awesome as the technology we’re all lucky to have is, it doesn’t make up for the lost memories. I'm happy I still get to text, Facetime, and Snapchat, my best friends in a time where we're unable to spend the time together.

As a senior there were so many things I thought I had more time to do. I wasn’t at the point where I was thinking I was doing my “lasts.” I wish we all could have known that our end was about to be cut short.

If there's anything I could say to my younger friends who are coming back to Bloomsburg in the fall; I would say don’t fail to take advantage of any time you have with your best friends in this town.

Go to commons as a group, stay up all night binge watching that show with your roommates, don’t be annoyed you have to attend that chapter meeting, walk around campus and take in the beauty of the trees and the people you’re surrounded by.

Appreciate every day you have left, and use this as a reminder that not everything is going to go as planned. They say you should live every day like your last — so make sure you live every day as a Husky like it's your last, because it might be. For many of us it is.

We will find a way to give Bloomsburg a proper goodbye, but for now all we can do is be thankful for the memories we have that make this so hard, and overall be thankful for our health.

— Drew Hess, a senior communication studies major and emergent media minor, is interning with the Office of Marketing and Communications. She is a native of Stowe, Vt., a town of 4,472 people in northern Vermont known for its trails and ski slopes.

#BloomOnward #HuskyLife

Not everything plays out like the movies

Expectations of college are high for everyone going in. More often than not the expectations versus reality are very different. That was the case for me. I pictured myself a month in with my best friends for life, plenty of things to do, a place to go after classes aside from my dorm room — a sense of belonging.

That isn’t what happened.

Although I have that now, freshman me did not. I made some close friends, but I didn’t feel I fit into a big fun friend group. There wasn’t a lot holding me to Bloomsburg. I wasn’t quite set in my major. I was eight hours away from my family. I didn’t feel I had a place in this town.

I spent the majority of my first year of college with my best friend, Amanda. Who to this day I’m ending senior year with by my side. Amanda and I met by chance that first weekend at “football palooza."

My first impression of Amanda was that she was so straight forward about everything she was talking about and I always thought it was funny because I was so shy. Because of the way Amanda was, she really brought me out of my shell to become a person who didn’t always care what everyone thought. We had very different personalities that happened to match together well.

From then on we remained close, and I have to say if I didn’t have her as a constant go-to I don’t know if I would be attending BU anymore. She was different than anyone I met because we both were in a place where we weren’t sure if BU was for us. So we leaned on each other a lot because we didn’t have a big friend group.

Amanda would bring me home with her to New York when everyone was leaving, because I wasn’t making the trek eight hours home. I bonded with her family and friends, and I got to explore NYC. We spent on spring break together visiting her family in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Amanda became my family away from home, and I’ll always be thankful for her in my life.

So, I stuck around and found myself.

I became more confident in who I was. In high school I overthought everything I did from what I wore to how I spoke. Since then I’ve grown to not second guess myself because it doesn’t matter who thinks what. That part of me grew in freshman year and since then has continued to bloom.

I realized not everything plays out like the movies or what you’ve planned in your head, and sometimes it can turn out even better. I learned it was okay for life to not be perfect. I’m thankful I didn’t give up on Bloomsburg when I hadn’t quite found the happiness here yet — because if I didn’t have everything and everyone I have now, I can’t imagine where I'd be.

— Drew Hess, a senior communication studies major and emergent media minor, is interning with the Office of Marketing and Communications. She is a native of Stowe, Vt., a town of 4,472 people in northern Vermont known for its trails and ski slopes.

#BloomOnward #HuskyLife

The long winding road between two small towns

A few weeks ago as I drove back for my eighth and final semester at Bloomsburg University, it reminded me of the days when Bloomsburg was just a possibility. Of when the buildings and pathways I know so well now were just photos to me. I wondered what my life here would turn out to be, and I never would have imagined the amount of growth I would endure and how many people would become family to me.

My story of where I’d go to college wasn’t one where the whole family had attended or where I’d known forever this is where I’d be moving to. Instead senior year rolled around, and I applied to 11 universities because that’s how much I didn’t know where I wanted to be.

Picking a college wasn’t easy. But when you know what you want, just not where it helps.

My criteria was simple:

• four-year public college
• affordable
• a well put together campus
• enough students to escape the high school feel

Bloomsburg checked all of those boxes for me.

With only one problem — it’s eight hours from my small ski town in northern Vermont. The photos of campus looked nice, but I couldn’t get a feel for the campus through that. I couldn’t possibly attend a college before seeing it and feeling it.

Which is when my best friend Ema and I decided on a February day senior year to hop in the car and take a quick weekend road trip down to Bloomsburg, Pa. We hadn’t driven this far on our own before, but it seemed like a fun opportunity for us to spend some time together before graduation.

It feels as if Ema and I grew up together, becoming best friends at 13. We split apart to different schools when ninth grade rolled around, but we never stopped being each others go-to. We spent the majority of senior year dipping out of our free blocks to drive an hour (one way) to our favorite restaurant Moe’s — in an effort to make it back to school by three for lacrosse practice. We were always ready to jump at something to do, so this trip didn’t take much thought.

So, we loaded up in her old beat up Range Rover and made our way which turned out to be just the beginning of my long trips down to Bloomsburg University — now four years ago. Being able to walk on campus and drive through town made it real for me. I knew I loved Bloomsburg after that initial trip — the picturesque campus, the cute downtown restaurants, and the small-town atmosphere that made me feel right at home.

I come from a very small town. The list of things to do with my friends is very short. I didn’t always love it, but I was comfortable with it. So even though Bloomsburg was eight hours from home, and I didn’t know a single soul coming in, it felt similar to home. And as the person I was then, comfortable was something I wanted to stick with.

So Bloomsburg University it was.

— Drew Hess, a senior communication studies major and emergent media minor, is interning with the Office of Marketing and Communications. She is a native of Stowe, Vt., a town of 4,472 people in northern Vermont known for its trails and ski slopes.

#BloomOnward #HuskyLife