March 26, 2008
A Letter to Parents from the Student Body President
By Evan Finley
Class of 2009
Student Body President
I was asked to write a short note about my experiences following my freshman year at Alma. It wasn’t always easy going back to living at home after living on my own for nine months. At school we are able to make our own choices and didn’t really have to be responsible to anyone but ourselves.
That summer also seemed to have an extraordinary amount of change in my life, and I am not sure if that was because I had been away from home or just that it was the summer for change. I found myself giving my parents a hard time about things that I wouldn’t normally have given them a hard time about while I was living at home during high school. When you live at home changes to your family occur gradually because you are there; when you are away changes seem to come out of the blue without you noticing the change coming. That is something you should have in the back of your head when your family confronts any change over the summer.
Getting a job became very important during that summer knowing that I would have increasing expenses coming up in the following years. A job also served as something to take up my time. After leaving my freshman year I quickly realized I would have a lot of time on my hands now that I wasn’t in school. I also found that the summer is a great time to take classes at a community college to get ahead in credits at Alma.
Finally, the reason I came back to Alma is pretty simple: I knew what direction I wanted to grow, and in my mind Alma was the answer. I couldn’t have imagined at that point what the Alma community has done for me in the last three years.
