I am a girl, so saying that I love Pinterest is not a far stretch, and I am at least on Pinterest a few times a day, but rarely does a pin on Pinterest change my life.

That’s not necessarily what Pinterest is about, right? It’s about designing your dream home, learning to cook and filling your perfect closet; however, the other day, a pin did in fact change my life.

This quote was, “Live a few years of your life the way others won’t, so you can live the rest of your life like others can’t.”

Did that change your life? Maybe not, but let’s look into it a bit farther than just the surface of the statement.

If you are reading this column, you most likely are a student, professor or live in the amazing town of Brookings and picked up this week’s issue of the Collegian. Either way you have associated yourself with South Dakota State University, the largest university in the state that happens to be in one of the fastest growing cities in South Dakota.

College,university, undergraduate school, State–no matter what you want to call it, we are all a part of it, and for all of us, it was our choice to be here.

Now I am under no impression that we are all here for the same reason, or that we all came to State with the same intentions. I know that everyone is different, but at the end of the day, we all come together to make up SDSU.

For students, we are paying a large sum of money roughly every five months to learn more about what we want to do as a career, and working our butts off for that piece of paper at the end of it all, saying that we did it. It’s not easy, and it’s not always fun, but that’s what makes it special.

If going to and graduating college was easy, everyone could do it. We know that that is not the case, and there are people our age all over the state that chose not to go to college.

I am not here to say that you have to go to college to be successful, because that isn’t true either, people prove that every day; however, putting up with all the generals and pushing for years to get that degree says something about your passion to succeed in your future and your drive to be the best that you can be.

Not many people in our generation choose to spend years after high school studying, taking tests and listening to hours and hours of lectures a week. But we do.

Are days that I think it would be easier to just get a job and not be in school? Sure, but I know that by pushing through and graduating, I have opened up an entire new realm of opportunities, and expanded my future to a degree that is undefinable.

Everyone wants to live out their dream, and everyone’s dreams are different, but personally, to live my dream, I needed a degree.

As a graduating senior, I have seen plenty of bad classes and have written plenty of papers, but in a few weeks, I am actually done here at SDSU.

It is crazy to see my time here come to a close, but for the students that don’t graduate quite yet, please know this, I know that it is hard, and I know that it is cold outside 87 percent of the year, and the other 13 percent is blazing hot, but don’t stop. Don’t stop thinking about the end result, don’t stop pushing yourself to be the best you can be, just don’t stop.

We Jackrabbits are living, only a few years of our lives, the way that others won’t, and after it all, when the college years come to a close and we all get our “big kid” jobs, we will be able to live the rest of our lives the way that others cannot.

Push yourself to be better, push yourself to prove the people who didn’t believe in you wrong. Push yourself to be the best you you can be, and even if your life advice comes from Pinterest, it’s okay, Pinterest is all about bettering yourself anyway, right?

Amanda is a political science major and can be reached at 

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