I now know how to "properly" start school. I didn't know that the first time I started school here because I was so worried about making to my classes on time and getting to know the bus system, taking notes in English, learning the banking system, opening up a bank account and a phenomena named credit card, those were all enough to make me not even realize how the first semester passed. It was surreal, like a dream and yet hectic, as if I was always running.
Now I know that you first have to go to your school's bookstore and indulge yourself in everything that has your school name on it: t-shirt, sweat shirt, sweat pants and a mug. Because you are proud of going to that school and you have to show that to everyone else, well everyone else on campus who also go to the same school, so not really a point there, but yoohoo!
Unfortunately I figured that out a bit late. I started setting foot in my school's bookstore the last year, after I came back from a visit to a friend who attended Berkeley. She had a big mug saying "Cal" in a italic font on it and she even bought a "Cal dad" T-shirt for his dad, which he wore when they had guests coming over. I didn't really get her, so I asked her why she bought all that stuff? And she asked me a very important question: "I'm proud of going to Berkeley, are you not for going to Illinois?"
I guess I wasn't. I never took pride in my academic achievements. I was never happy when I got an A. Nor unhappy when I didn't get one. That's how my parents brought me up. They thought me that it's ok to not get an A, that it's not a big deal, and I grew up with that in mind. I won competitions and my classmates' parents would call my parents to congratulate them and only then they would receive the news. I got into two of the best high schools in Tehran and my dad told me "good". I never took pride in anything, until my that visit to Berkeley.
I started to think about my journey, how far I've come. I, who hated school in undergrad and didn't even want to graduate have come to a grad school here in the United States of America, a country most known as "land of opportunities". I decided that I was going to be proud of myself, and make myself realize that. I bought a sweatshirt, bought my mom and dad mugs, bought myself a mug and had coffee in it everyday. Instead of my life being on fast forward, I started to look around, to spend an afternoon in quad, laying down under a tree shadow and read, to absorb the fact that I made it, I made it to my dream, to go to a good school in US.
University of Illinois, Urbana-Chamaign campus is my Alma Mater. At first I thought Alma Mater is the name of that statue that we have next to our quad, but then I realized the term means the school that you attended, and that every person calls his or her school Alma Mater and that made me feel less special about that statue, feel like it has all been a prank. But nevertheless, I love my Alma Mater, I even love that statue, I have a graduation photo in front of it for God's sake!!!
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