There is so much that can happen in four years; so much that can change. Four years ago, I was a senior at Dale High School, a 2A public school just off of I-40 East towards Shawnee. We were just wrapping up fall baseball playoffs (we didn’t have a football team) and gearing up for the best season of the year, basketball season.

I absolutely loved high school. I loved knowing everyone I went to school with and their families. I loved the community and the support. I loved that my teachers had a relationship with me outside of the classroom. I didn’t love that my dad’s office was next door to my first hour class so he always knew when I was running late; but, other than that, high school was awesome.

College, on the other hand, terrified me.

The dream was to attend the University of Oklahoma. I had gone to games since I was a little girl and I had been told that if I worked hard in school, I just might be able to earn a scholarship and attend. When the dream started to become a reality around this time four years ago, I couldn’t have been more excited. Or terrified.

I was used to walking by first graders every day in their adjoining building. I babysat for most of my teachers. The principal was my best friend’s dad.  I didn’t know anyone that attended OU. I heard horror stories of lecture classes larger than my town. How would I get the help I needed? How would I get involved in campus activities? How would I make friends? Would I make friends?  Saying goodbye to everything I had known would, quite possibly, is the hardest thing I had done.

Fast forward four years and you’ll find me sitting at my computer, sipping on my favorite kind of coffee, and writing this blog because last weekend I was crowned the 2013-2014 Homecoming Queen.

I’m not sure how to sum up this experience in words, except to say that my fears of being lost in a big sea of 27,000+ people have been replaced with a deep gratitude, appreciation, and love for the sooner family and this campus.

Over the past four years, OU has become my home. It is a place where I belong, where I have been invested in, and where I have been able to pour out. I have grown as a person, as a student, and as a friend. I could not be more humbled by this incredibly undeserving honor. The number of times I have cried over the past few days is getting a little absurd.

I am overwhelmed with joy at the thought of the support and encouragement I have experienced, not as Homecoming Queen, but simply as a Sooner over the past four years. And now, as a senior at the University of Oklahoma, I can’t imagine anything harder than saying goodbye to this season of life and all of the friends and mentors that define it.

But then I’m reminded by my childhood friend Winnie the Pooh, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

Live on University.

Brette Throckmorton

Economics, Pre-Law Senior

Dale, OK