Xenia Hernandez

Key 129C-014

My Prologue to CSU

My Past, Present, and Future

I’ve always been a planner. I had notebooks filled with my ideas, elaborate

conversations with famous people I’ll probably never meet, and obsessively wrote down every

excruciatingly boring detail my teachers said in class. However, in my senior year of high school,

I realized I had no actual plans about my major or even a college. Sure, I had ideas, but nothing

filled me with the same amount of joy and excitement I read about in books or heard about

from my peers. I felt nothing.

My name is Xenia Hernandez and I first decided to go to Colorado State University

pretty late in the application process. One of my most defying characteristics is that I’m anti-

social. Many of my friends enjoy talking to every single person who they come across, but I

would often take entire lunch breaks to go sit in the field away from everyone. Surprisingly, I

still managed to make a handful of friends who have stuck with me through 12 years of school.

Most notable is my two best friends, Eric and Angelina, who helped me through the first

challenges of life after high school.

At the start of senior year, I was dead set on going to my local community college. I had

no idea what I wanted to do with my life and I didn’t want to spend any extra money, but I was

not satisfied with my choice as the decision date neared closer and closer. Angelina eventually

suggested that I choose a different school after hearing me complain about our local college,

OJC, for the hundredth time. Admittedly, I was pretty hesitant to consider a school where I’d
have to move away and spend thousands of dollars, so I just laughed it off. Nevertheless, that

night I couldn’t stop imaging what my life could be like if I chose a more adventurous path then

I was used to. On those days in the field, I’d daydream and read about amazing characters who

had grand adventures that I could never come close to in my everyday life. Finally, in choosing

CSU, I could actually become a new and exciting character rather than the boring one I feel like

I’ve been stuck with my whole life. Over the course of our art class, my friends and I slowly

worked through pros and cons on going to three different schools: Otero Junior College (OJC) ,

Colorado State University- Pueblo (CSUP), and Colorado State University (CSU). Ultimately, I

obviously chose CSU, but I needed to figure out a way to pay for this enormous expense.

For the rest of my senior year, I tirelessly worked on completing and submitting

scholarships all across the valley. Often times, I would be required to submit a recommendation

letter and several essays. I then turned to some of my favorite teachers: Mrs. Vonfeldt and Mrs.

Robinson, who each wrote beautiful essays that excellently captured who I was as a student

and proofread my essays whenever they could. Without their help, I would have had to go to a

different college because I simply could not afford to go to CSU. Furthermore, Angelina also

helped me to decide what to do in college. She had already decided to go to CSU and become

part of a key community, so she guided me through the key application process (another way to

force me to be more adventurous and help me through the difficult transition from a very small

town to a huge college town) and even helped me request her as a roommate.

Now, in the second week of college, I am already overwhelmed. In the upcoming weeks,

I already have several scheduled exams, an abundance of social pressure that says you only

have a few weeks to make friends, a massive bill to pay, and the nearly crippling fear that I’m
going to fail out of most of my classes before I even pick a major. Somehow though, I’m still

excited for the future. At graduation, I was named Salutatorian because I always worked

extremely hard to get all A’s in my classes and I would often become tremendously stressed

throughout the day. But, I still made it. I finished as second in my class and I (mostly) know who

I am. I know I’m determined, persistent, kind, and apparently funny enough to keep my handful

of friends for 12 years straight. If I stumble, I know how to keep pushing forward through the

hardest challenges, recognize and correct my previous mistakes, and seek help if need be. My

greatest treasures this semester will definitely be my friends who push me to be better, my

trusty bullet journal that I partially started as a joke, the required key study sessions, and the

abundance of mentors/ advisors who I can talk to whenever I need to.

Overall, I’m simultaneously ready for the next year and have never felt as unprepared as

I feel in this moment. There’s so many adventures, people, and challenges to face, but I know I

can get through anything as long as I remember why I’m doing this. I’m doing this for my future,

my happiness, and to finally prove to myself and everyone else a phrase that I almost always

called stupid in high school. “Anything is possible if you set your mind to it”.