My Wonderland

College. For some, college is a time of freedom where all that matters is how many parties you can fit into one night, one weekend. For some, college is a time to realize that college isn’t for them. And for some, college is time for discovering their destiny, what life holds for them. For me, I feel like it is a combination of all these that defines college. Of course, my definition does not merely piece together these various definitions, but rather the concepts behind them. It is a time for going out, making friends, exploring the city of Austin. It is a time I will certainly fail at some things and learn my strengths and weaknesses. And of course, it is a time for me to lay the foundation for my future, my family, my career.

We come to college having known certain things our whole lives, whether assumed or told. As I entered onto the University of Texas campus, I “[began] to think that very few things indeed were really impossible” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 16).
My weeks here at the University have opened my eyes to the wide range of possibilities, each door waiting to reveal a new possibility, a chance to take “the rapid journey through to air” (Through the Looking-Glass 14) to the unknown and undiscovered territory of college life.

We grow up with accepted truths, “a red-hot piker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that, if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 17). I believe that college is a time reject some of these truth. Now, don’t go cutting your finger with a knife to see if it will truly bleed, but challenge yourself intellectually, spiritually, physically, emotionally. Take a course you have never dreamed of. Investigate your belief in a high power and re-secure your faith. Opt to keep off the infamous “freshman 15.” Become friends with an unlikely character. Try to find meaning behind the impossible representation of a box pictured here.

I have found that my encounters with individuals thus far has many parallels with Alice’s encounters in Wonderland, each of her encounters “a parody of the freshman’s encounters with other freshman at UT” (678). Unlike Hannah, I did not “find my new college experience devoid of life.” Rather, “I came to UT knowing that some of my high school friends would be accompanying me to this large University. However, I chose to stray from the majority of these friends. Having been with them since middle school, I was anxious to make new friends, find the unlikely companion that so many speak of meeting in college. Just as Alice found “an enormous puppy looking down at her with large round eyes, feebly trying to touch her” (Alice in Wonderland 44), I have found others reaching out to me in hopes of forming a friendship, unsure of where it will lead. In the past month and a half, I have become great friends with someone very similar to me and still very different. This fairly unlikely companion has shown me that, once again, anything is possible; and that is what college life is about.


After Alice’s first odd meetings with those in Wonderland, “Alice had got so much out into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 19). I now know that my next four years will be full of the unexpected, and I must be prepared to take on each of these unexpected occurrences. I have yet to come across a Cheshire Cat who fails to remove the smile from his face, or a hookah-smoking Caterpillar, however, I wouldn’t put it past Austin and the University of Texas to create either of the two. As Joe Nichols says in his song "The Impossible," "sometimes the things you think would never happen, happen just like that...i've learned to never underestimate the impossible." As we know, here, anything is possible.