I Wonder How Modest I’d Be Without HC ...

I fell in love with my alma the minute my mom & I drove onto campus. Out of the middle of nowhere was a winding entrance with a wonderful, leafy sky, and out of that nowhere came all these Georgian buildings bursting with passionate, smart, Greek-system-loving students.

After a semester of severe, depressive growing pains that I can now see were attributed to the folly of trying to keep a ‘hometown,’ I became one of those passionate, smart, Greek-system-executive-office-holding students, became a theatre person, became a bit boy-crazy, and, by the end, became a lot of the me I am now.

How would I be different if I’d stayed in-state and attended thirteenth grade with the majority my high-school friends? How would I be different if I’d gone to the private school in one of my home state’s biggest cities that my second-best-friend wanted me to go to with her? How would I be different if I hadn’t gone to college alone?

I sure as hell wouldn’t have been audacious enough to think I could stroll into the largest professional theatre in my home state and ask for—nay, demand (in a totally adorable and winning way, mind you)—an internship. HC gave me a self-worth I don’t think I’d have found and been unable to shake had I been in a bigger collegiate pond: I graduating thinking I was a passionate, smart, and all-kinds-of-things-loving student of the world. I still do. I went to HC and excelled there . . . I can excel anywhere! I can excel at anything! My Bachelor of Arts degree from a small, private, liberal-arts school makes me as good as the best and better than most! HC strikes awe and respect in the hearts of man and beast!

Well, not in Montana it doesn’t.

But thanks to my alma, I don’t care that nobody I meet now has ever heard of my little winding entrance or leafy sky or Georgian architecture. I am passionate. I am smart. I am audacious. I am proud and grateful and indebted to the place that grew me up.

I am obviously still full of self-worth. Thanks, alma.