I remember it like it was yesterday — packing all my belongings into five cardboard boxes, loading them and my family into our light-blue Astro van and driving the 20 miles that separates Garner from Raleigh. The ride was a lot shorter for me than it was for others doing the same thing that day.
The drive wasn’t anything special. It was no different than my previous countless trips into the capital city, and it felt just like every other Saturday, but hindsight shows the short ride changed my life — I was going to college.
While unloading my belongings into Owen Residence Hall, saying goodbye to my parents and having that first breath of freedom are all things that I will remember from that defining day, there is one memory from that day that I attribute my successful completion of college to.
This memory didn’t take place in what people would consider a traditional college setting. It didn’t take place in the dorm, at a party, in a classroom or at a sports event — it didn’t even take place on campus.
It was at a six-chaired table positioned nicely next to a window, overlooking Western Boulevard inside a place so many find peace and joy — Bojangles’.
It was there that a friend, whom I had just graduated from high school with three months earlier, and I had a conversation over four-piece supreme dinners that I am thankful for to this day.
We had both been to orientation over that summer and heard the horrifying statistics the University throws at you during your two-day campus visit — “One out of four students who come to college don’t finish their degree.”
After analyzing both my friends and my own lackluster performance in high school, and when we compared ourselves to the other students from our high school who were coming to State and were so-called geniuses in high school, we had a conclusion. Those one in four students the University talked about were going to be us.
That conversation is still fresh in my mind, and I am thankful to say today I wasn’t one of those four who didn’t finish their degree as I, along with many will be graduating and entering the “real world” in less than a month.
When I ponder how my life over the past four years could have been different if I was one of those four, it is surreal to consider the experiences I would have missed.
Sports related, I would have missed a ton of memorable experiences. These include rushing the court after defeating then-No. 1 Duke my freshman year, despite having seats in the third level. And traveling to Orlando, Fla., to witness Philip Rivers and Jerricho Cotchery break numerous Tangerine Bowl records in the team’s win over Kansas.
Sophomore year there was the fun I found in supporting quarterback Jay Davis throughout the entire football season despite a majority of fans believing Marcus Stone was the second-coming of Rivers.
How could I forget Julius Hodge’s clutch shot at the end of the Wolfpack’s second-round NCAA Tournament game that clinched a win over the favorite Connecticut?
The soap opera that was the basketball coaching search nearly a year later — during the process that took over a month, I couldn’t leave my apartment before checking popular sports Web sites to catch the latest “inside” information.
Running through rows of empty seats at Carter-Finley Stadium, celebrating quarterback Daniel Evans’ 40-yard game-winning touchdown Hail mary pass to wide receiver John Dunlap after a majority of Pack fans had vacated the stadium prematurely.
And there was sitting press row during the improbable upset of then No. 2-rival North Carolina this season, and watching State’s magical run to the ACC Tournament Championship at the conclusion of the season.
Perhaps most meaningful to me was covering women’s basketball this past season — watching coach Kay Yow courageously battle cancer and inspire many in first-person will surely be something I will never forget. Not to mention the team’s impressive finish to the season that at times seemed like it was sent from above.
Outside of sports there are countless experiences as well, probably enough to fill this entire paper.
There was the fun of playing hall sports in the dorm, studying abroad in Oxford, England, spending countless hours in Carmichael playing pick-up, writing for the Technician, making countless friends I would have never met if I was one of those four students mentioned earlier and many more.
These are all experiences that make me proud to be part of the Wolfpack family and thankful that I spent the past four years of my life at this University.
Since I can write whatever I want, I would also like to thank those who made an impact on my college career — my better half, my parents, those at 304 and 5401, my great friends from Oxford and everyone else I didn’t mention.
