We college-goers are at a point in our lives where we actually have a substantial say in what’s going on in our lives — for some of us, this is a new experience.

If you, like the vast majority of UND students, grew up in a middle(ish) class home somewhere in the North Dakota boonies, in Fargo or in some suburb of the Twin Cities, I’d bet there wasn’t a whole lot of discussion with your parents throughout high school as to whether or not you’d be going to college. For myself, and most of my friends here, it was always just sort of assumed that we’d be going to college, though we never put much thought into it until 10th or 11th grade came around.

Now we’re here, and, for the first time ever, we might not have some vague understanding of what life will be like in four years.

Ask our 9th grade selves, and you’d probably hear something about likely being in college. Ask a few juniors in the Union, and they might not even be able to tell you about what the end of the month will be like, let alone where they’ll be after graduation.

Of course, that’s good and bad, but I like focusing on the good — the unprecedented power and freedom suddenly bestowed upon us, strangely, by ourselves.

This all hit me when I started thinking about a friend I haven’t seen much since high school. She went to University of Minnesota — Duluth, I ended up here and, as far as hanging out goes, it was just sort of a cosmic bummer that neither of us could do anything about.

Oh well, right? For a bunch of high schoolers with no time, energy or ability to change the circumstances we stumbled into around May of our senior year, yeah, that’s that.

But things have changed dramatically.

I was thinking about what it would take to end up in the same city as a few of my closest high school and college friends, when I walked myself into an imaginary wall I’d built myself.

The truth is, if I want to be near these people after school, I can be. The only one who could prevent that from happening is me.

I have a general idea of where I’d like to end up, and it helps that many of the people I want to remain close to have similar ideas of living in Minneapolis or moving to central Colorado.

I don’t know what opportunities will be in front of my friends and I when we graduate, or where on this earth they may lead us. But still, with a little luck, it could be super doable.

I’m hopeful, because just visiting these far-away friends has proven super doable, too. I’ve spent weekends in Fargo with my NDSU buddies, I’ve made roadtrips to Duluth and St. Paul and I’ve even managed to meet up with a good friend of mine who goes to school in Los Angeles.

The transition from high school to college is obscured by some undercurrent feelings of helplessness. Now that we understand how adult freedom works, life after college can be whatever we want. And anybody you want in it can be there.

If that just requires a Skype call to somebody in Duluth, make it; don’t convince yourself you’re not in control.

Will Beaton is the Editor-in-Chief of The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].