Last summer was without a doubt the worst and best of my life to date.

For a period of time last summer, I was homeless in every manner of the word. I was kicked out of my apartment and my parents disowned me. Along with the parents went my job and only source of income and even the right to my car.

That time in my life was a sink or swim moment. And luckily, I swam. I managed to get a job, find a place to live and make enough money for books by the time school rolled around.

Over the next semester I learned something that I had never really encountered before. I learned how to live for myself.

I no longer had a safety net of parents to bail me out, which is something most people do not encounter until they are in their mid-twenties. I could really make my own decisions for the first time ever. If I wanted to take off to New York the next morning, I could. It was like being released of restraints that I hadn’t even realized were there. It was with this revelation I started to question whether I wanted to go to college. Something I had never thought about before.

Since I was young I knew I was going to go to college, not because I wanted to, but because people told me I was going to. It never even crossed my mind to do something else with my life.

Everyone knows the person at school or work that never seems to be on time, never is prepared, or never put in that little extra effort. I used to be that person and I could never understand why I couldn’t seem to succeed in any of my classes.

It wasn’t until I was on my own, in this completely new way, that I was able to look at my reasons for attending college. Why did I want to be here at City College?

College is only one of the many paths that High School graduates can take to achieve success in life, even if your choice is to take a break before you attend college.

To succeed in college I believe the key is to want to be there. This is something that a lot of students don’t seem to want when they after 12 years of public school finally are free.

I have watched people go through this stage in their lives very recently and it is really a floundering around of what to do with their life.

Through all this in my life I’ve learned that I want to be in college but it was something my parents had always swayed me into wanting. So I changed my major and started my own life. My parents even started to get in contact with me again.

To be successful in what you do you have to be doing it for the right reasons.

The best reason in the world is to do it for you. To do it because you want to do it, not because your parents or someone else want you to.