It's nothing short of a miracle that anyone graduates from college these days. In four years. There are times when I feel like I just graduated yesterday, and others when I feel so far removed from that experience. Those are four of the most challenging, liberating, and absolutely exciting years of your life - who you are when you arrive to school is so different than the one popped out four years later. Us 
persevering through Union College, a tiny liberal arts in the middle of nowhere New York, really thought we had it all. Union was a form of a glamorized high school where you arrive a big fish in a small pond, and only continue growing as your surroundings shrink around you. Union was the sort of school where everyone was recognized by either name or face, and the reputation of your sorority or who you danced with last Saturday night always seemed to precede you. We only took three classes a week per each trimester, and at times even that was a stretch. If we didn't feel like going to class, we would hop into a car and roll around Schenectady blasting the likes of Jay Z and Biggie and Lauryn Hill, our hands dangling out the window, forcing each other to "listen to the words" trying to find meaning behind Biggie's rants. If LT was in the car, then she would make us listen to Dave Matthews, Counting Crows, The Roots, or just SPOON on repeat until we fully discussed all possible meanings of the lyrics. If I was riding shot-gun, then it was surely Lay Lady Lay until my heart's delight. I was also exposed freshman year to Junior Vasquez who pretty much played the soundtrack to my college years. But his music only made sense driving around Route 7 at 4 in the morning, thinking you and the person next to you are the only ones either awake or alive in the entire universe. Sean Paul wasn't big then, but if he was I can assure you we would be dancing to his beats, either on bars or fraternity pong tables, holding my girlfriend's hands and meandering our way through the mess of fraternity life, filling each others beer cups and warding off strange, drunk men. We would count each others drinks, especially when frats served grain, making sure no one got to the point where they needed to be swatted by our own Tri Delt sober police. If a boy did one of us wrong, we would blow cigarette smoke in their face or dump beer on their precious fraternity floor or steal their composite pictures off their walls, laughing while tormenting them knowing that would be the end of that booty-caller.
There was an entire culture of "late night," where anything took on more importance once dawn set in. "Late night" we would peruse the aisles of Price Chopper, stealing nibbles and warding off of our hangovers with huge Dunkin Donuts in hand, laughing hysterically at our own ridiculousness. Late night we came up with all our great ideas - while buzzed from absinth one of us smuggled back from a study abroad in Prague, we made a midnight barbecue and taught each other how to do keg stands from the privacy of our own backyard. We didn't bother returning our boyfriend's calls. We felt invincible. Everything great came "late night" - we would leave a party in a heartbeat if one of us came up with the miraculous idea of ordering in from Blue Ribbon, where we high-fived the locals and rolled joints in the car, inhaling cheesy 
quesadillas and pot simultaneously. Late night we'd make our pledges paint the Idol with a bucket of blue paint, bake pot into brownies, or teach our little sisters how to build a bong out of everyday fruit. Close your eyes and loose yourself to sleep and you simply miss out. Late night we made up dances to Mary Mary and Blu Cantrell, which we'd 'perform' at the next fraternity mixer, too drunk and giddy on life to even bother returning attention to the boys. Late night we would take drives around the deserted streets of Schenectady, air-roof down talking about the bubble surrounding us and why we ever have to leave this nest and how to catch the attention of that upperclassman. We'd pack a car and go snow-tubing, throwing snow balls at each other and making snow angels in the shimmery light of a Schenectady dawn. "Late night" I lost a bet and drove to Turning Stone, only to win $1,000 on the slots, proving that only late night, luck and chance are on your side.
Schenectady became our under-exaggerated version of the real world. Within the safety of our Union bubble we felt utterly invincible. Nothing 
could touch us; not even connections to the local mob created by our daily visits to Rupsis, Gershon's, and of course Geppetto's, where we consumed beer like air and guzzled mind-racers and red death shots through straws, bumbling along to the broken-down karaoke machine and dancing on the DJ's turntable. Over a family dinner at their Italian-esque villa in the midst of the Schenectady ghetto, we were given their pager numbers and business numbers and kissed twice on each cheek and given home-made perogis to take back to the sorority house. When we graduated four years later, they threw a party for us girls under a white tent pitched in their backyard, and even allowed us to invite our tongue-tied boyfriends. I learned a lot more outside of Union's classrooms than I did within; I learned how to find connections with people I never would've met from my sheltered hometown of Coconut Grove; I learned how to roll joints and chop wood and drive in icy conditions, but I still never learned how to do my own laundry. I learned that through the support of best friends, anything is possible - when my own growing pains senior year urged me to seek out the Yulman Theater, it soon became my home away from home during productions of Prometheus Bound and The Big Bang. I learned how to walk backwards while giving tours to naive 11th graders, their whole lives waiting a head of them, their college experience a blank book. My friends and I learned to keep St. Clares on speed-dial, where the whole lot of us would stumble in the clinic in an alcohol-induced trance still in our formal dresses and best-pressed suits, best friends and boyfriends hovering over us, wanting to be the first to hear from the Doctor that her eye, and then later her teeth, would soon heal. I learned how the rest of my freshman floor would help get a girl ready for her first date at the local Fireside, spritzing her with perfume as the boy's name buzzed with adrenalin through the intercom. I would soon learn how this continued throughout college; by the time we were seniors we flat-ironed each others hair and curled one another's eyelashes, and waited on the porch for our girlfriend to be picked up by her date, waving to her in the car as she pulled away. The rest of us would cuddle on the couch, making runs to Blockbuster to re-rent Office Space or Stealing Home, prying our eyes open with caffeine and no-doze waiting for her to safely return home. I 
soon learned that we would bestow this same nurture to our little sisters, whom we hovered over like mama birds, making sure they weren't hazed too bad and that their new hook-up treated them like the princess they were. Rest assured if one of us was in trouble we'd all be there in the middle of the night, banging on fraternity windows and shining flashlights into blackout shades, anything to return our friend safely home.
I learned how to explore the middle-east long before terrorism and bombs and September 11th. I learned how to tuck my shining Star of David inside my shirt while climbing Giza's pyramid stones, listening to techno in the Gaza Strip, and waltzing around the Nile in the literal middle of the night. I learned how to puff from a hookah while partying at Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium, the same beach-front discothèque that was bombed two years later killing 21 kids like myself. I learned that magical things take place at the Wailing Wall, when you still believe in late night promises made within the confines of Jerusalem's limestone walls. Regardless of it all, I somehow managed to comprise part of the 2/3 of my sorority who made Dean's List, which still remains one of the biggest mysteries of it all.
I learned how to love, and I learned how to loose. I learned how to trust, and I learned how to move past disappointment. I learned how to compromise, I learned about commitment, and I learned how to do a lot of this while experimenting and pushing myself in new situations. No matter what, I knew where my safety-net was, and that gave me the security to do whatever I felt I wanted. I got my heart trampled on, a couple of times, and I trampled right back on. Nothing eased the sore of first heart-ache more than your friends, waiting eagerly for you on the porch with home-spun drinks and bushels of Kleenex, wanting to destroy the bastard who hurt you. I can't think of any better time in your life to do this all.
I wouldn't trade any part of my college experience for anything. I am so grateful for falling hard and falling fast, and for every little thing I was able to accomplish during those four short years. I do think of life as a mosaic, and I do believe that if it wasn't for all the trust and security and sense of self I inherited from Union, I wouldn't believe in Beshert and that everything happens for a reason. There was a reason why I felt lost and overwhelmed after I graduated, there was a reason why I distractedly took my first job offering as a fundraiser at the UJA, and there was a reason why I absent-mindedly obliged when a co-worker pushed me to work a Wall Street event with her at the New York Hilton on 7th avenue. It all came to me at around 10:30 PM on December 5th, 2001 when Steve happened to be at this same event, and we happened to spot each other across the room.
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