This paper will not write itself...but neither will this blog

So lately I've been thinking about a lot of things. Mainly money and its relationship to school and the rest of my life. Two years ago I wasn't thinking about these things at all. I was thinking about graduation, getting out of Huntsville, and getting to Knoxville, Tennessee. I was convinced that I could get a million different scholarships to pay for school, spend four years at the best place on earth, graduate top of my class, and get the best job in the world...SportsCenter! Looking back, it is almost comical how silly I was. Two years ago I was one the smartest kids in my class. (It was a very small class.) Two years ago my ultimate goal was to have my own column in Sports Illustrated. Two years ago I could not stand children. Two years ago I was a Republican. Boy, how things have changed.
I love music, but mainly because I like to sing. I love any song that is sung passionately, when it feels like the artist has put their whole being into that song. (Picture Howard Roark type passion.) As a result, I tend not to look much into the message behind the song. But today a song really threw me for a loop. While I was at work, Steely Dan's "Reelin' In The Years" came on Pandora, and then I heard it again on my way to my other job. ~Quick plug: 100.3 The River = greatest radio station in North America~ Here's the line that really hit home:

The weekend at the college
Didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge
I can't understand

Now I make no attempts to decipher what Steely Dan actually meant; all I can do is tell you what that meant to me. I keep looking at other schools, Auburn, Alabama, Athens State, and all of them make perfectly logical choices of schools to attend in my circumstances. Auburn is generous with scholarships and a decent school for education. Alabama is a good school for communications if I decide that is the path I want to take. Athens is an excellent school for education and cheap. But now I see why I cannot totally commit to any of these schools. Because what I miss the most about U.T. is not the classes I took, though I took some good ones; not the friends I made, though I made the best anyone could ask for; and not the free passes to sporting events, although those were niiiiice. What I miss the most about U.T. is what I actually learned. Not that you never get the same rhino virus twice or how to find a derivative or how to launch a winning P.R. campaign. What I learned about life-about friendships, about helping others (courtesy of Dr.K), about God and his mysterious ways.
When everyone asks me why I don't go to a school in Alabama, that's the answer I can't tell them, because there is no way of putting into words how my year at the University of Tennessee impacted my life, how it transformed me into a different person, yet the person I think I was supposed to be all along.
I had a friend tell me in high school, "Angie, if you don't go to Tennessee, I think the world might stop spinning." Is it foolish to waste all that money to go to a school out of state when I could get just as good of an education here for much less? Probably, but if I don't go back, not only do I risk the person I've become fading away, but apparently now the fate of the entire world. And that's not a risk I am willing to take. :-)