I started writing these “All About” series to help you, friends, get to know me. I’m new to the blogging world. And you can’t really invest in a new friend without getting to know them. So it only seemed appropriate to give you all some background on some big impactful things in my life. Last month, I wrote about HOW NATHAN AND I MET. This month, I’m writing about where I went to college.

I spent the best four years of my life growing up and developing my adult self at a little liberal arts school called Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

I’m willing to bet that a vast majority of you have never heard of Hope. The next question that I usually get asked is how I ended up at Hope.

So let me start there, I ended up at Hope after a VERY LENGTHY college search. I looked at all types of schools, in all different types of places. Large universities – all over the country. I decided, though, that there was something about large universities that didn’t quite fit my personality and my learning style. I learned better in a smaller setting.

My parents read a book during this process that I can credit introducing us to small schools called Colleges that Change Lives, in which Hope was one of the colleges discussed in the book. It sent us on a different trajectory that maybe I didn’t have to go to a big school to get a top-notch education. Maybe there was a different option.

Hope offered to me a place where I could take classes in things outside of my majors. For example, I grew up dancing, and they allowed me to take dance classes for free, just to allow me to keep up with it.

I never took a class with more than 30 people in the class, which was important for me, as I just learned better when class sizes were smaller, and professors were extremely accessible. All of my classes also required loads of writing and critical thinking. I didn’t appreciate this truly until I left college, and found that critical thinking and effective communication are truly the cornerstone to almost every career.

Education at Hope is rooted in the Christian faith , which was important to me to have a faith-based education. I had never had a chance to have professors weave in faith into education before my experience at college, having gone through public school my whole life. While faith was nurtured on a regular basis, it was not a requirement – no mandatory chapel or participation in faith-based activities.

And then there was the social aspect. Being solely an undergraduate school, with a student body of about 3,000 students from all over the US, I recognized almost everyone on campus, but didn’t necessarily know everyone. It’s a tight knit community, but still offers things like Greek life, competitive athletics, and steeped in tradition.

But the most important thing I gained were really wonderful, lifelong friends. I think this is the case for most people in their college years. It’s a time of growing up, discovering one’s self for the first time outside of living under your parents’ roof. These girls are my soul sisters. Finding really good friends during those pivotal years truly makes for four wonderful years.

It’s hard to sum up in short post how meaningful a place Hope was to me. It’s always around this time of year that I get nostalgic thinking back on the type of person I became in college thanks to professors who challenged me and friends and community around me. And I like to think around this time, when Hope move-in day is just around the corner, that there’s another group of girls that are meeting for the first time in their freshman dorm. And that those women will grow together – supporting each other, challenging each other, loving each other becoming lifelong friends.

What was your college experience like? Did you love college life? Or just couldn’t wait to be done?