<p>...you felt like REAL college student? Eating Ramen at 2 AM with your dorm mates? Having dinner with a professor? Wearing your school's sweatshirt back at home? Let's hear some good stories.</p>
<p>haha.</p>
<p>I did that back in high school.<br>
I go to Shawnigan Lake School in BC, Canada.</p>
<p>The first time I felt like a college student was my first hell week. The week where you oddly have 5 or so papers due, and a test in probably every class. In high school I had teachers that would somewhat work around each other and we had people that would whine if we had a test in another subject for the same day. In college you just don't have that!!</p>
<p>when I wanted to go out somewhere and didn't have to ask anyone to do it...</p>
<p>I finally realized I was in college when I downloaded counter strike: source at 2am then proceeded to play it for the next 12 hours straight, except for two breaks to the bathroom.</p>
<p>I have yet to feel this way.</p>
<p>When I got dropped off at my dorm.</p>
<p>Not in order but: When I went running at 2 AM in the cold and it felt normal. My manbag makes me feel more college-like than a backpack would. Just getting dressed and walking all the way to class (U of I is a big campus) at 8 AM and then realizing I would have to that everyday rain or shine or sleet or cold (which in IL can all happen in the same day). Going to other dorms other than mine (private housing) b/c it is louder and more social and has communal bathrooms. Getting a job and not telling my parents. Being hungover and going out to breakfast with my parents. Pulling 2 allnighters in a row and falling asleep in class and waking up on the floor on top of my desk. Just going out to eat or ordering out when I felt like.</p>
<p>And finally I think I officially (not first) realized it when I was riding back to my far away dorm from going swimming after work with my trunks on (it was obviously still warm out) at 11 PM just riding across campus and through the Quad and everything was warm and beautiful (I used to have to ask to go anywhere back at home.) and I just felt at home and how I could do this whenever and just took a long way back. It was the coolest feeling ever. All the others were part of a gradual process but that last one is when I officially felt it. I wish I could feel that moment whenever I wanted.</p>
<p>Waking up in my dorm room the day after move-in. Alone.. because my roommates weren't there yet. It was odd. I've always had to share a room before with my sister. I'm always a little confused when I have privacy in my room.</p>
<p>When I was sitting out with my friends by the lake on a beautiful autumn day a couple of weeks after I started college, just having a laugh while ignoring all the work we had to do.</p>
<p>plates, that, my friend, is pro</p>
<p>Mine happened this semester..</p>
<p>1) Taking 17 credits, working 15 hours and volunteering 11 hours a week, and still maintaining a 4.0 GPA.</p>
<p>2) Before class, my history professor sitting on the table right next to me and convincing me to take honors courses, counting for my 16 and 17th credits.</p>
<p>3) Having three tests/quizzes in one day.</p>
<p>4) History professor correcting my paper at the last minute, in class, during an essay and looking up to see him chuckling while reading it. I got an A+.</p>
<p>And a bad one..</p>
<p>1) Realizing that the two friends I have known since I was 5, and thus grown up with, lack the desire to educate themselves- one has dropped out and might try to go to the U of M, I don't know about the other.</p>
<p>pulling all nighters for a full week</p>
<p>Yeah losing friends due to dropping out was a huge thing in my life b/c it just happens. Some people just don't get it. In high school it's okay b/c it's the slackers and burnouts and people that obviously don't want to learn that dropped out. Now it is people who are obviously smart and want to be there but just couldn't handle other aspects like social/academic balance or the huge environment. It was weird to hear people talk about not coming back when they are blantantly intelligent enough to be there but their grades arent showing it. Just sad sometimes.</p>
<p>Also sad is people dropping out of their majors. I had a engineering internship before my freshman year and after a year people who did it with me, who had their hearts set on engineering, just hated it and didn't want to do it anymore. I mean engineering isn't for everyone and people drop it a lot but I had done an engineering internship with these guys and it was sort of sad to see them go.</p>
<p>Not sure about feeling like a college student for the first time, but I definitely felt like an engineer for the first time when I finished a six hour meeting with my engineering teammates for my Intro Engineering course at 3am to work on a 42-page paper due a few days later. Very proud of that.</p>