In light of it being my senior year at college, let’s take a step back and look at the many things I was proclaiming in my senior year of high school.

“I hate Republicans” — spoken on multiple occasions.

“I hate Catholics” — spoken primarily in Protestant-based settings.

And my personal favorite, “I hate root beer,” which I still stand by.

I loved going on rants (still do), using harsh words (still do) and speaking at my full natural volume (yeah, you get the idea).

Perhaps the more conservative members of my family were concerned that my college years would only exacerbate these personality traits. In some ways, it did, but in other ways, college has taught me how to take a breath and think.

My first official post on my Substack was about Charlie Kirk’s assassination and good Lord, if you thought that post had been contentious, you should’ve just taken a look at my first draft. I hadn’t slept, definitely hadn’t eaten anything, all while digesting the news that this very controversial figure had been killed. And just before I was about to click the ‘publish’ button, I stopped and decided to sleep on it. The next morning, I was appalled at the words staring back at me, and rewrote much of what I’d originally spit out.

Graduating high school senior Caroline wouldn’t have done that, but college graduating senior Caroline did.

College has changed the way I view things. I’m still mouthy, but I’m less combative.

I remember sitting on a panel with pharmaceutical students representing Planned Parenthood, along with its director of public affairs at the time, Mazie Stilwell. The student who had organized the event had pulled Stilwell and me aside and said that the questions were phrased very neutrally, and the title of the event would not say it was sponsored by Planned Parenthood, because the pharmacy club didn’t directly endorse any one organization. 

This loosely translates to: “In case antiabortion students object to you being here, we’re only saying you’re here lending your voice, and you’re not in direct sponsorship with our organization.” High school Caroline would have been annoyed up the wazoo. “Just say you support abortion access! It’s not that hard!” I definitely would’ve said. While college Caroline wasn’t any less annoyed, she was more understanding. She knew the club was just trying to protect itself and was paying us a service by giving Stilwell and me a platform to discuss and answer questions on our pro-reproductive rights stances.

My college experience has encouraged me to think critically. For all the complaints that young people leave college more liberal, they’re just being exposed to new ideas and interacting with their class material accordingly. They’re thinking critically about the world around them, and if people have issues with that, then I suggest they examine internally why they think critical thinking is a no-go.

I was fully ready to continue down the road of hairy-legged, braless feminist wonder, and it’s not like any of that ended when I enrolled in higher education. But now, I think a little more before I talk, I choose which fights to engage in and which not to and I think critically about the world and its institutional makeup.

Instead of relying fully on my own previously unbaked and baseless opinions, I read political theory class materials and recommendations, and journalistic books and novels from my personal inspiration writer library.

 I engage with their ideas just as much as my own, if not more. I value the privilege to be exposed to others’ ideas.

I listen in class. There are conservative students with whom I wholeheartedly disagree, but they provide great insights, too. When I disagree with someone, I calmly raise my hand to do the same. If we spar, I like to think the disagreement is beneficial to us both.

So, thanks Drake University, you taught me well. You didn’t turn me into a hairy-legged liberal. I already was one. But you did teach me to think before I speak — before I write — to listen courteously, without twitching my eye too much. And those aren’t skills I possessed before I stepped foot on campus. 

Read more from this author at her Substack, Caroline’s Current.