I was familiar with the power of tradition long before I stepped foot on Alabama’s campus.

At my high school, seniors waited anxiously for four years to finally participate in an ultimate rite of passage: painting a window. Oh, I know. That’s some straight-out-of-the-Hunger-Games level action right there.

It’s important for me to say that my high school was not a normal place. At a highly competitive magnet school, being incredibly intelligent meant you were average at best. My peers were nationally ranked in a multitude of things that I didn’t even know you could be objectively good at. The average ACT and SAT scores were somewhere around a 32 and 2100, respectively. We had National Merit Finalists, Science and Math Olympiad Champions, robotics and chess teams that were better funded than athletics, and every other possible “nerd” stereotype that might come to mind. When it came time during senior year to publicly display where my brilliant, Type-A classmates would be taking their talents for the next four years, people did not dare pass up the opportunity.

At the entrance of our school we had ceiling-to-floor glass windows; they were impossible to ignore. When the decision was final, seniors would paint up the logo of what school they would be attending in the fall. Each Ivy League school got its own pane, not due to the prestige, but because we were sending enough kids to each one that they actually needed that much space to fit all of the names.

Although it was just acrylic paint on glass, the roars of Princeton Tigers and Columbia Lions were deafening. I half-heartedly painted my crimson script “A” as close to the floor as possible, out of the line of vision of gawking students that worshipped this display.

My reluctance that day was mirrored in the way I approached the start of my college career at Alabama. I desperately wanted to be anywhere else. So much so, in fact, that I blatantly ignored the open arms with which the school welcomed me. This came in forms that, looking back now, are too numerous to count: a generous academic scholarship that would allow me to graduate debt-free, professors and advisors that genuinely cared about my academic and personal success and a football team that at the time was vying for its fourth National Championship in five years (to put things in perspective, my high school football team won one game in four years…yikes.)

The first day of my freshman year, as soon as I had finished saying my final goodbyes to my parents, I locked myself in my room and cried. I thought that by being far away from home and so wildly out of my comfort zone I had surely just set myself up to fail. Alabama wasn’t my dream school. It still isn’t for many out-of-state students applying to college, but it should be.

I quickly realized how much the administrators, professors and advisors alike at this University actually cared about the wellbeing of students. At a school of now nearly 38,000, I was somehow provided a deeply personalized and unique educational experience. I have made lifelong friends that I look forward to visiting all over the country. My career in the finance industry post graduation was jump started by the never-ending resources and services that were all at my fingertips as an Alabama student. The University of Alabama took a chance on me with the hope that I would take advantage of all that it had to offer, and I am so glad that it did.

Now, with only a few weeks until graduation and the desire to be as non-cliché as possible, I wanted to take the time to write this piece to say thank you because there is truly so much to be thankful for. This University extends a hand to students of all backgrounds in every corner of this country and across the globe. Our student body right now is the most academically gifted and geographically diverse in the history of this institution. At a school that prides itself on traditions that have been in place for hundreds of years, I am grateful that Alabama afforded me the opportunity to be here at time where things are in such an important and substantial upswing.

I am so excited and proud to enter the “real world” as an alumna of The University of Alabama. Roll tide forever. 

Natasha Levitin is a senior majoring in finance and marketing.