 I want to start off by saying that this isn't necessarily the video that I wanted to make, but it's the video that I have to make. For those of you that don't know, my name is Josh Beasley and I just finished up my first year at Yale University where I'm studying electrical engineering and computer science. There I'm an Air Force RTC cadet and I'm also a magician. The purpose of this video is to finally get out everything that I've wanted to say about college. Everything that I've been holding in and look back on what I thought I would get out of this experience. I got accepted to Yale on March 31st 2017 and I have to say that it was one of the most memorable days of my life. I want to hear the full story. I made a video about it last year so go check that out. You see I was absolutely ecstatic. After rejection and rejection I had no hope that Yale would work out. So the fact that I'm here now is just absolutely crazy. Most of the accepted students attend Bulldog Days later that month and get a taste of what living on campus is really like but unfortunately I couldn't go. I had visited before but it was brief and I really longed to revisit the place I would now be calling my home. The point is that I was excited out of my mind but I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. You see it's almost as if I just saw Yale as a name, a big why. I didn't have anything to associate it with yet. I was completely in the dark. But at that point it didn't even matter right? I was going to Yale. Wrong. I feel like for most of that following summer I didn't even think about college. I knew it was going to happen but I almost pushed away any college related thoughts. I focused on relaxing and pursuing my passions. Magic, video making and computer science. Finally comes time to pack up and leave and I feel hopelessly unprepared. It's Yale supposedly one of the best schools in the world. I'm about to embark on the next four years of my life. The four years that everyone has been telling me are supposedly the best years of your entire life. I swear I almost had an emotional breakdown the night before. It was really bad. I wasn't going immediately to school though. I was doing a week-long backpacking freshman orientation trip with my other Air Force ROTC cadets. Honestly I was kind of dreading it. I may be that Eagle Scout with over a hundred camping nights but backpacking still sucks sometimes. I found when I finally got on the trail was something unlike anything I've ever experienced before. You take 10 like-minded individuals with similar goals but completely different backgrounds and throw them on the Appalachian trail for 10 days and you get one of the best weeks of my life. Never before have I bonded so fast with a group of individuals. By day two or three we were inseparable. It felt like the conversations on the trail never died and even when they did we relished in the silence of nature together and it wasn't awkward. Within mere days these people were no longer strangers. They were friends, wingman, family. I expected a week of sweat and trail mix but ended the week with nine new best friends and memories that I will never forget. So my hiking trip ends and I'm back on the bus to Yale. I'm a little nervous. I just got off the trail yet I'm less than two hours from meeting my roommate, my sweet mates and stepping into my residential college for the very first time. What I didn't know coming into Yale was that my residential college, Timothy Dwight College, is pretty much unanimously agreed upon as the worst residential college. When I told my full leaders I was NTD I was met with. Ooh sorry about that. I don't get to live on old campus with all the other freshmen. I'm off by myself. What does this mean? Am I going to be able to make friends? To say that I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. But it was fine though. No matter what happened I knew I would already have a support group on campus and there were the smelly people sitting around me on that cramped bus. So I finally get to Yale and the first couple weeks are an absolute whirlwind. I meet my roommate Jake and we hit it off almost immediately because we both do magic. Me and my other sweet mates Aeton and Kenneth and soon become pretty good friends with the guys across the hall Walker, Ethan, Kingry, Jacob because we're in the same froco group. What I did not expect was for everyone to be so passionate about what they do. I found that most Yale students have a certain thing you associate with them. Aeton has been doing independent research on microscopic worms for the past three years and won the National Science Fair. Kenneth started his own environmental nonprofit and is practically on a first name basis with the North Carolina governor. Like what? That's insane. I knew everyone would be smart but man I almost felt like I wasn't good enough. First semester was filled with late night conversations in the buttery about crazy topics and just getting to know everyone. I was stuck out in TD away from all the other freshmen so the 100 of us out there became a pretty close group. I didn't expect to find such a supportive community away from home. Like the head and the dean of TD knew my name and they knew everything about me before I even walked through the gates on the first day. There was so much support so many people checking in to see how I was doing. I felt at home. Another thing that surprised me was the social opportunities. I'll admit that I wasn't a party animal in high school and to be honest I had no idea what to expect from Yale. I envisioned Ivy League parties as a bunch of people sitting around talking about Descartes and quantum field theory. Not that that doesn't happen sometimes but in general Yale is pretty lit I must say. There's always something to do on the weekends whether you choose to go out or not. Even if you choose to stay in there's performances and shows and people that you can sit in a hammock with in the TD courtyard till 3 a.m. in the morning. I've met so many people. If you want empirical data I'm pretty sure my number of Facebook friends has doubled since I got to Yale. These aren't normal people though. These people are ridiculous. Some of these people make it look easy. Like most people that went to public high schools who are at Yale right now we're pretty used to like being on top when it comes to academics and stuff but uh that is not the case at all at Yale. There are some people that will tear through CSP sets so fast that they just make me want to like transfer out. Do I feel like I'm struggling? No but I definitely feel very very average but it's great. It means I have places to go. I'm being challenged and I'm constantly improving. I think the thing that surprised me most though was how much I fell in love with every aspect of the place. Between the people, the academics, the opportunities, the social life, the extracurriculars. I couldn't have asked for more. I knew it was a great year because when I was packing up my stuff I didn't want to leave. I'm sitting at home filming this video right now and guess what? I miss school. That's not really something I could have said in high school. You know what? That's okay because I know what I'm doing now. I've had time to reflect and when I get back on campus next fall I'm gonna achieve every goal I've set this summer because guess what? I've only got three more years and I'm gonna make the most of it. If you enjoyed this video please consider dropping a thumbs up down below. This video really meant a lot to me and a quick thumbs up will help the channel out a lot more than you think. 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