Back from first year of college

• From left, Richie O'Conner, Zack Zenk, and Wil Vance

From left, Richie O'Conner, Zack Zenk, and Wil Vance

Talk about it

Summer time is probably a college student’s favorite time of year. There are no classes to get up for, someone else gets to do the laundry and there is nothing like a home-cooked meal.

Richie O’Connor, a Marquette University student, is one of those kids. Majoring in both finance and accounting, O’Connor just finished his freshman year of school and is glad to be home.

“College was good, I guess, except I couldn’t go home a lot,” O’Connor said.

One of O’Connor’s only complaints was that going to a school on the other side of the state made it hard for him to see his family in Hudson. He was only able to make it home four times all year, and he missed his family by the end of the school year.

However, the positives of O’Connor’s college experiences far outweigh the negative. Dorm life, partying and going to basketball games with friends were some of the better parts of his first year at college.

“Of course, living on your own was different,” O’Connor said. “There were no rules, no drama like there was in high school, and popularity doesn’t matter.”

For his first summer home, O’Connor is planning on working, hanging out on his family boat, golfing and spending time with all of his friends that he didn’t get to see while he was at school.

Another first-year college student back for the summer is Zack Zenk, who is a pre-engineering student at UW-RF. For him, college wasn’t as huge of a change from high school since he lived at home for most of the semester.

“College was pretty good, a little bit of difficulty,” Zenk said. “But I made it out alive.”

However there were a few things that Zenk thought were good changes between high school and college. He felt that in high school he wasn’t accomplishing anything or really doing stuff that he enjoyed doing, where as college allowed him to take classes he wanted to take and work toward something he wanted to do.

This summer Zenk is going to be working a lot, hanging out with friends as much as he can and he plans on take a trip to Seattle to see some old friends.

“It is nice to be working and have the summer to relax,” Zenk said. “It is good to have everyone back from college to hang out with.”

After a full school year in North Dakota, Will Vance is glad to be home for the summer. A business management major at North Dakota State University, Vance felt like college was a big change for him schoolwise.

“It was alright, way different than high school,” Vance said. “I needed to study a lot more than I did in high school.”

Vance also needed to adjust to the larger size of some of his classes. In those big lecture halls he felt like it made it a lot harder to ask all the questions he needed to in order to understand some of the material. But with only three classes a day Vance figured he couldn’t really complain too much.

Living four hours away, Vance only made it back home a few times over two semesters. He spent a lot of time with his new college friends, but he is glad to be home.

“It is good to be back and relax,” Vance said. “I am working this summer to make some money.”

Tags: education, college