Oh, the way I have absolutely no idea what my life is going to look like in 6 months. I have spent months pushing off the idea of college and figuring out where I want to go. I have been choosing between the University of Kentucky and Iowa for a long time and now, I finally need to choose where I am going. This process was not stressful at first, but now have no idea, and being split between 2 schools makes it so much more difficult.
The questions of the year have been “Do you know where are you going? Have you made a choice? What do you want to major in?” at almost every place I go. Then when I follow up with “I’m split between Kentucky and Iowa…” they always ask “which way are you leaning more towards?”. I always respond with how I am completely 50/50 with the schools. There is no deciding factor or anywhere that I am slightly more interested in, and let me tell you why.

First of all, Iowa. Only about 2.5-3 hours away. Huge thing. It is easy to come home more frequently, I can come to some of my brother’s big events if I wanted to, see my family more, etc. Then, on top of that, my sister goes there. She will be a Junior next year, in a sorority, big into nursing, and just loves Iowa. Once she left for school, we got so much closer because we would catch up on our lives, spend more quality time together because she would leave at the end of the weekend, and she is more educated on today’s college life that she loves to tell me about it. I went to visit her in November, and it was one of the most fun weekends I have had in a long time. I really got the going out experience that you don’t get when you just tour the campus, and it felt so nice. She brought me to hang out with her and her friends and they all of course were saying “come to Iowa, Iowa needs you, you can hang out with us all the time in Iowa.” Which was nice to hear, but a lot of pressure. Along with just my sister being there, she will have the car, so we can drive back home together whenever we really need to. Along with that, I can also rush into the same sorority, follow her steps, and make my college experience easier, because I would already have it planned out. But then there is the problem with that because I also want to do my own thing and figure it out myself like she did when she had no one to really look up to. Now, going on to my education, Iowa had a great teaching program. I know so many teachers that graduated from there. They also have so many support systems. I went to an Iowa informational meeting this week and they gave a lot of information about the education program as well as things like disability and accommodations. So it was nice to have that information given to me. Then with financials, it is cheaper for me to go to Iowa over Kentucky, but my parents have encouraged me to not worry about that and to focus on where I want to go and feel like I belong. So there are definitely a lot more pros than cons, but still a hard choice.

I also posted on the Facebook roommate page for both colleges. I definitely got a lot more responses from people from Kentucky than from Iowa, but I found a few that I really liked and found a lot in common with. It literally feels like you are online dating, but it is a lot of fun to find people that live in different states and be in communication with them.

Moving onto Kentucky, there is not much off-campus life that I got compared to just touring the area. But the moment I walked onto campus it felt like home. It was everything that I wanted, a modern campus, amazing people. I just fell in love with the place, but I did get that same feeling at Iowa. In Kentucky, there are no communal bathrooms, and most people room with 4 other people, which seems like so much fun, and you kind of get your own privacy. Although that isn’t much of a deciding factor for me, it is more of a bonus. I am going to revisit again in about a week, so I just want to get a final feel and see from there.

So I bet while you are reading this you are probably thinking about how I’m crazy for comparing the two schools because Iowa seems like the best choice. But trust me, the two different schools give off the opposite feeling, but they are both amazing places, and I know I will be happy wherever I go.