Growing up 15 minutes from Lehigh, I learned early on how to avoid it.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t physically avoid the school \u2014 my mother worked at Lehigh and wouldn\u2019t allow that \u2014 but I kept my distance emotionally. By my sophomore year of high school, when my family and guidance counselors asked about my college plans, I said I wanted to go somewhere far away, like New York or Boston.<\/p>\n
All I knew was that I wanted to leave the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would never even consider Lehigh,\u201d I used to say.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My mother had dragged me to plenty of alumni events as part of her work in alumni relations, and for the first time, I saw how accomplished Lehigh alumni were.<\/p>\n
And it scared me.<\/p>\n
As far as I was concerned, Lehigh was too close, too smart and too small. I thought college was supposed to feel like an escape, and Lehigh felt like the opposite.<\/p>\n
I knew from a young age that I wanted to study communications, and Lehigh doesn\u2019t offer a mass communications major.<\/p>\n
So why would I attend a school that doesn\u2019t have what I want to study?<\/p>\n
Syracuse University was my first choice going into my junior year. Its sports communications program was strong, I had family in New York and the campus had the \u201chome away from home\u201d feeling I thought I wanted.<\/p>\n
But then my junior prom was held on Lehigh\u2019s campus.<\/p>\n
I arrived at the venue at 8 p.m., and by 9 p.m., I found myself wandering around campus in four-inch heels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Something about the Clayton University Center, covered in construction, caught my attention. Standing in front of the building, I Googled, \u201cIs Lehigh\u2019s journalism\/communications program good?\u201d<\/p>\n
What I found surprised me.<\/p>\n
Lehigh\u2019s journalism program had everything I was looking for: accredited professors, a nationally ranked newspaper and classes in sports media.<\/p>\n
Still, Lehigh felt like an extension of my mother\u2019s work and my high school \u2014 two things I couldn\u2019t see past.<\/p>\n
I shook off the feeling I had standing outside of the Clayton University Center after prom and spent the summer looking at other schools.<\/p>\n
But something kept bringing me back.<\/p>\n
That fall, I took a psychology class at Lehigh through a dual-enrollment program.<\/p>\n
Being on campus every other day, I realized Lehigh didn\u2019t feel as small as I\u2019d thought. On my walk from Rauch to the Business Innovation Building, I rarely saw the same person twice.<\/p>\n
I also never saw my mother or anyone else she worked with. That feeling from junior year started to return.<\/p>\n
My family began to convince me that 15 minutes from home could feel like hours if I wanted it to \u2014 because they believed Lehigh was where I needed to be.<\/p>\n
So I submitted my Early Decision I application, not fully realizing it was binding.<\/p>\n
Once I understood, I felt at peace knowing I would likely attend Lehigh.<\/p>\n
When I got my acceptance in the parking lot of Parkland High School, I was thrilled. I\u2019d finally accepted what everybody else in my life already knew.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, there were only three months until move-in, and time seemed to move slower than ever.<\/p>\n
On move-in day, as I hugged my dog goodbye, my mother told me she\u2019d left her job at Lehigh.<\/p>\n
It felt like the reason I\u2019d grown to love this school was suddenly gone. I didn\u2019t understand why she would ever want to leave.<\/p>\n
After my first semester, I struggled to find reasons to love Lehigh. I began to think maybe I was meant to be somewhere else. Syracuse stayed on my mind, and visiting campus during winter break made me question my decision.<\/p>\n
But just as leaving Lehigh was the right decision for my mother, she knew staying was the right choice for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So I promised to give it one more year and take advantage of everything the university had to offer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, finishing my second year here, I have learned it\u2019s OK to be unsure about what you want. Within that uncertainty, the school I once swore I\u2019d never attend became the place I needed all along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up 15 minutes from Lehigh, I learned early on how to avoid it. I couldn\u2019t physically avoid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3946,153,155,154,4520],"class_list":{"0":"post-153323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-4-min-read","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-edit-desk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}