Halfway is a weird place to be. You’re closer neither to the start nor the finish. You’ll spend as much time going back as you will if you move forward. You have as much experience as you do possibilities.

Come May 5, I’ll be at the halfway point of my college career. All the above ideas should hold true, and yet it seems that none of them are.

Chronologically, I am as far from the finish as I am from the start, but the finish seems much farther away and the start seems like it was just yesterday. There is no turning back. I can’t undo what I have learned and to quit seems unfathomable, so I must keep moving forward. And I can state with certainty that my experience is not equal to my possibilities because at Gannon the possibilities are truly endless, and I’m just discovering mine.

At the start, I had a good plan of how the next four years would progress. I would take my required classes, participate in a few extracurricular activities and head off to medical school afterwards to become a pediatrician.

The possibilities had different ideas.

I’ve taken a wide array of electives on top of my required classes, from American Sign Language to Psychology of Human Development to Intro to Visual Arts. My planned extracurricular of theatre has proven to have more in store than I realized. Although Edge wasn’t even on my radar when I entered Gannon, it’s become something I look forward to every day. My plan to specialize in pediatrics has since expanded to an ambition to be a pediatric neurologist researching developmental disorders.

But if the change in my previous plans is any indication, these plans will have morphed by the time I’ve reached the end of college – all because of the possibilities.

College isn’t just a time to go to class, take tests and get a degree. It’s a time to grow physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. But in order to grow, you have to be receptive to the growth. There are an endless number of options, and trying out different ones will help you discover which one is right for you. That’s what it means to “believe in the possibilities.” Gannon students live the university’s motto every day and it has helped them become everything from doctors and nurses to teachers and priests to artists and communicators.

I believe in the possibilities, and being only halfway in my college career, I’m just discovering mine.

Matt 🙂

Dr. Keith Taylor, Julie Coppolo, Fr. Jason Glover and Dr. Jeff Bloodworth are just some of Gannon’s staff and faculty who believe in the possibilities.