I was born and raised a Florida State fan. Ever since I was 6 years old I wanted to go to school in Tallahassee. I wanted the most typical college experience: tailgating, massive frathouse parties, football games, a big historic campus, the works.
Somewhere between standardized testing and a campus beach, I ended up at Florida Gulf Coast University.
This week I was in Tallahassee covering the women’s basketball team in the NCAA tournament and got to see a glimpse of FSU student life and the college experience those students were having in comparison to mine.
At FGCU, we always hear classmates complain about not having the same campus culture and party scene that other state schools are known for. Take FSU for example.
There are no ifs, ands or buts about it, Tallahassee rages harder than us.
But it’s on us, FGCU.
We’ve heard it our whole lives, that this is the greatest time of our lives. Most of us blow it off like “yeah whatever, when I’m [insert age here] then it’ll be the greatest time of my life.”
We’re always reaching for something further from what we have.
What we have now is the greatest time in our lives, and I guess we always thought that meant a lack of responsibility and plenty of time to have fun around a keg stand.
But it’s not.
Being in school gives you the opportunities to have experiences that you would never get the chance to have if you weren’t here. We’re in a time of our lives that we can literally  do whatever we want.
We have the whole world in our hands, so why not have a little fun with it?
I say take your chance, take the opportunities that are here for you.
It’s time to jump. It’s up to us to create that experience we dreamed of. It’s up to us to step up, take charge and live the life we want.
We are young and we have more power than we realize. We have the power to create the environment we’re looking for.
We can’t sit around and wait to be handed the “Animal House” experience we hoped for. We have to take it and then take care of it.
As the saying goes, you get out what you put in.
If you went to college wanting to be part of a fraternity or sorority, are you putting time and energy into your sisterhood or brotherhood?
If you want a position, are you putting the time in to build the resume?
You get out what you put in.
The matter is always the same, it does not disappear, nor is it created. That’s basic physics. Your energy is never wasted -— you will either succeed or learn.
You can’t go through life expecting to be handed what you want.
We can’t wait around for parties and we can’t wait for others to tell us we’re having fun.
It’s on us.