The first night of college, all the first-years and orientation leaders piled into the student center for a meet-and-greet. For some reason the school administrators thought it was a brilliant idea to hold the event in near-darkness with pop music blaring from rented speakers so that you had to scream or nod blindly when talking to a new classmate.

More than anything, I wanted to escape, to go back to my dorm, call my parents, and tell them this whole college thing had been one giant mistake. Instead, I stayed. As it turns out, that night was the start of some of the best years of my life, but it easily could have gone in another direction. click here for complete story