By Claire Hornkohl
April 2, 2025
Dear Michigan State University,
My time spent with you is a period that I will never forget. We’ve had our ups and downs, like most relationships, but truly, you have grown on me.
I wasn’t ready to leave the nest two years ago. It felt more like a forceful push from society’s expectations of what a young person is supposed to accomplish to be successful. I was pushed on to a campus of over 50,000 students, all trying to become something.
As a transfer student, my first semester here consisted of going into survival mode. I was rooming with someone I was not compatible with, in a very competitive major (which I only chose because I had to declare something) and dealing with mental health issues I’d never experienced before. I will spare the details, but to be frank, it sucked.
I share these complications not because I want pity, but because I want others to understand that college is not like the movies. What the movies don’t show are sleepless nights of stress and frustration. Or the homesickness you feel the first time you are sick away from home, having no one to take care of you but yourself. What is real is isolation, friendship losses and gains and the fact that there are some indescribable experiences that you truly would never have unless you go to university.
By the end of that first semester, I lost count of how many times dropping out crossed my mind. But to avoid this entire letter being completely negative, I will say that I did find one place I felt like I belonged in my first year at MSU. I stumbled across the Professional and Public Writing (P2W) program and it felt like fate. I made an appointment with the P2W advisor, Casey Miles, simply to discuss the program and by the end of that half hour Zoom meeting, I had requested to change my major. I owed this new chapter of my life to Casey Miles.
In my new major, I began to take classes that I actually enjoyed, which I didn’t know was possible. Classes that aligned with me and who were taught by professors who encouraged me to express my values. I began to see the light, accepting that I was the only constant in my life.
Senior year, I let go of my expectations and suddenly everything seemed to make sense. I found my people, I discovered my passions and I began wishing I had more time here.
In a few months, I may forget the hours of work I put into getting to this moment, the sleepless nights and the anxiety. But in the end, the time I spent walking to Bessey 317 for class or a club meeting, celebrating a game day win, eating dinner in SnyPhi with my best friends and sitting by the river will be what means the most. The way the seasons change on campus, the smell of the laundry room while walking past my first-year dorm, reminiscing on how much I have changed—it is the little things that have helped me realize how valuable time spent here is.
The days hammocking by the Red Cedar in the sun, making connections with professors, stopping to take a photo of the Beaumont Tower and discovering what it means to be a good human. These are the moments I hope to never forget.
I will look back in admiration at my strength for being uncomfortable. For being sad. For being in solitude. It makes my memories with my people and the knowledge I have gained that much more precious.
College is lonely sometimes. To my fellow Spartans who can relate, I hope you can soak in your solitude. Joy and purpose will find you when you least expect it. And to MSU, you kept it real. You’ve seen me at my lowest and still somehow found your way into my heart.
I am feeling so young and so old and so me all at the same time.
There will never be a time quite like this.
With all my love but just a little hate,
Claire Hornkohl
Claire Hornkohl is a senior studying professional and public writing. She uses her passions for writing and editing to inform, inspire and create change. In her free time she enjoys playing guitar, cuddling her cats and rummaging through the local antique or thrift store.