Last night, I laughed when I checked status updates on Facebook. Both my mom and brother had mentioned they were going to be watching the CMA Awards, and for the first time in years, I was planning to catch the show. Although my brother and I are grown up and moved out, there are still events that draw our family together while we are geographically miles apart, and that was the case last night.

About 20 minutes into the program, my phone rang. Without even glancing at the caller ID, I knew it was my mom calling to discuss the CMA Awards. We chatted about the hosts, the jokes, and my favorite group winning an award. (Go Lady Antebellum!) Of course, our entire conversation spanned the length of a commercial break before we hung up to watch more. We shared two more phone calls during the evening.

I love that country music is a common interest in my family. We've been to the Grand Ole Opry together. We've spent hours on vacation enjoying the many country radio stations we can choose from down south. I grew up listening to Southern gospel as my family rode home from church on Sunday nights. As much as you can joke about the stereotypes of country music and those who listen to it, I still proudly proclaim my allegiance to it.  I'm glad I can share that appreciation with the rest of my family.

This past Saturday was my five-year college reunion. I’ll admit that I spent most of the week figuring out what I could wear that would best show I was successful and happy with the way my life has turned out post-graduation. (Isn’t it funny how we as women put so much stock into our wardrobes? As if a certain outfit can fulfill all those goals I attached to it.)

So, dressed in my “perfect” outfit, I headed down to my alma mater with Dave to attend the breakfast reunion. We met up with my reunion buddy Kara before walking into the smallest room they could have chosen for a class reunion. Only a few tables were crammed into the tiny room, and when we got there, only a few seats were already occupied. We chose a spot perfect for people watching, and we observed the cliques of five years ago re-forming as people entered the room and headed straight to a table of old friends. Our table was a hodgepodge of my classmates, most of whom I’d been acquainted with in college but none who were close friends. Still, we were a friendly group, filling each other in on our lives after ONU.

Less than two hours after we first gathered in The Fishbowl (really, that’s the name of the room), we walked out of that room and made our way back to our present lives. It no longer mattered which side of the cafeteria we had sat on. Whether we’d held a student government office was no longer important. We were making our way back to our jobs, our spouses, our children, our hometowns far away from the place where we’d spent four years for college.

As I thought more about life after college, I realized just how far away that stage of my life really is and how significantly my life has changed. Five years ago, I was defined by my studies in the English department. I worked as a teacher’s assistant, grading papers for 10-15 hours a week. I’d spend my evenings eating dinner in the Red Room with my friends, then going to the newspaper office to work on the Features section or heading to a club meeting or hanging out with my roommates. I worried about graduating without an Mrs. Degree and wondered what my first job as a college graduate would be. I cried on the drive to my parents’ house after we’d packed up my apartment and I said good-bye to the place I’d called home for four years. Life outside of ONU was a scary unknown.

But today, with ONU as my foundation, I’ve climbed many, many steps and have a life completely different from the life I lived over five years ago. I’ve since earned a master’s degree from another university. I’m working my dream job. (Ironically, I’m still grading papers on the side). My husband has absolutely no connection to my alma mater, except that he married me.  My church isn’t Nazarene. Most of my current friends attended different colleges and graduated in different years. Life is very different now, but I’d dare to say, as much fun as I had at ONU, my life is even better than those four years I spent there.