It’s ”Let’s Look” day, where I share a little peek into a random part of our life. I’m linking up today with two of my favorite blogs (Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything), to share a “look” into some little aspect of my life.

Last month, I shared what we ate in a week.

This month, we’re sharing a bit about our high school and college years. I loved this prompt. It took me down a happy rabbit hole of looking at pictures, and thinking about the Lauren of college and how much I’ve changed.

Technically this prompt was let’s look at the high school and college years…but it’s pretty clear looking back at my Amazon Cloud drive that I failed to save very many high school pictures/they’re probably all printed pictures that never got scanned into digital format.

I went to college at a small liberal arts college in Holland, Michigan called Hope College. Undergraduate population of 3,000 students right off of Lake Michigan. It was the most fun four years of my life. I met some of my very closest friends to this day, and I’m forever grateful to the education I received and the genuinely good and kind people I met at Hope.

Here’s my only picture from my freshman year of college…I met my future best friend in my freshman year dorm. She lived right next door. 😊 This is my best friend from college, Amanda.

We lived in a freshman girls only dorm. It was both so much fun and as weird and crazy as you would think.

I joined a sorority my freshman year, too, and that’s when I really started to find my footing at college with lots of friends and things to do!

My sophomore year, Amanda and I chose to live together and moved to another female only dorm on campus.

After a great sophomore year, I had the single most life-changing experience during my four years at school. I did a summer session abroad in Vienna, Austria that summer…

I somehow convinced Amanda to do this trip with me, and we roomed together that summer.

We seriously had the BEST time taking class in the morning, hopping on the subway and going out to a winery in the afternoon or exploring a museum. It was so much fun taking on Europe with my best friend.

I have to include this picture because it’s one of the few that you can see the full Lauren college fashion of the moment…

Flip flops, big belt, and the double layered tank were go-to’s that summer.

Then we came back to Hope for junior year…I lived in my sorority house, and had so much fun doing all of the Greek life things that year. Desperately tried to get Amanda to join my sorority, but to no avail.

I loved that cubic zirconia necklace like no other. I think I wore it every day thinking I looked so classy.

I turned 21, and went to the bars wearing a tiara…because that made perfect sense to 21 year old Lauren.

The summer after my junior year, I did another ”study abroad” but this time in Philadelphia while interning with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. (At this point in my life, I was preparing to become a lawyer, thus the legal internship.) We lived in downtown Philadelphia, and this internship program had students from lots of other small liberal arts schools as well.

Kendra (and my parents) came to visit me halfway through the summer.

In case there are any Philly people out there, I’m definitely a Pat’s fan for my cheesesteaks.

And then my senior year, I moved to an apartment in downtown Holland, which was a couple of blocks from campus. I lived with my bff, Amanda, and four other girls that were all from our freshman year all girls’ dorm. This was seriously the best, most fun year of them all!

Four awesome and amazing years! It was certainly hard to say goodbye to such a special place and that moment in time.

A few weeks after graduating from Hope, my parents helped pack me up yet again and move to North Carolina to start to grad school! Here we are all freshly moved into my own apartment. My first time really living by myself…

What was college like for you?? The rise of the digital camera are certainly evident in the number of pictures I have of each year. 😂