By BETHANY ADAMS/Guest Columnist

Rainy days are some of the few times that I truly miss high school.

Walking across Montevallo’s uneven cobblestone walkways that are a haven for huge, threatening puddles, while trying to carry books and an umbrella, is not an enjoyable or easy task.

I’m a very clumsy person and while I have yet to fall down at UM, I’m sure that it is going to happen one of these rainy days.

At least in high school, if you did happen to have to walk in the rain to get to class, it was a relatively short distance. Oh, but not on a college campus. We are all victims to the mood of Mother Nature here in the wonderful land of college.

It is extremely difficult for me to comprehend that my first semester of college is almost over. We recently registered for our spring classes, which is something that I have mixed feelings about.

I love a few of the classes that I am in now and will be sad to leave them behind. However, there are other classes that I will run out of on the last day doing an exuberant happy dance all of the way to my car.

Back in high school, if I didn’t like one of my teachers or was really struggling in one of my classes, I just had to deal with it for a year, because I had to pass that class to graduate.

But in college, whether I love a class or hate it, I’m only a student in that class for four months. There is both good and bad in that, and I’m simply not used to the routine of it yet.

With the semester coming to an end, that also means that we are now taking the last of our tests and preparing for our final exams.

All of the finals in my classes are cumulative, meaning that I had better remember everything that we have learned since September. That is a scary thought. But come mid-December, amidst the sounds of Christmas carols and jingle bells, I will be able to look back on my very first semester in college and think, “I made it.”

Bethany Adams is a Pelham High School graduate and a freshman at the University of Montevallo.