With graduation approaching quickly, it is hard not to think about how I ended up here.

When you are in high school, “liking” your teacher is a necessity for making it through the year or sometimes all four years with the teacher. It makes the day to day routine just a little bit more bearable and it makes learning fun. 

However, in college building relationships with professors’ is an essential for success, especially professors in your area of study. Eventually professors become mentors to those students searching for guidance and advice in their field of study. Sometimes professors will even become the go to person for information once a student graduates, if they need a little extra help or some outside input, on a project they are working on. 

Professors believe in you; so much that they dedicate their lives to teaching you to become a better you; to gain knowledge you once did not know, to help you acquire the skills needed to succeed outside a classroom, to help build the confidence to, “yes, you can do this.” 

It is a privilege to have such professors. Our professors do not need to be our mentors, they do not need to stay the extra hours, nor do professors give us assignments that are truly pointless, like some students like to say. 

“If it was easy then everyone would do it,” my father, Mike Fontana, said. 

Those are the words, that have for the past two years, been repeating in my mind. 

I took two-and-half years off school before landing at Oakland. Various reasons lead up to the decision to go back, one of those is my father and mother. My parents raised my brother and I to follow our dreams. To be happy with what we choose to do in our lives. 

They never pressured us into job paths that they thought would be better suited for us. I was never told to become a doctor instead of a journalist, my brother was never told become a lawyer over joining the Air Force. Instead they supported our decisions, dreams and our goals became theirs. 

I often wonder if my parents feel as though they did not succeed as parents because my brother and I are still in many ways trying to figure life out. But that is life, plans fail, people get sick, cars breakdown, houses burn down, and people leave. 

“I wish I pushed you guys to do more, to be more,” my dad said to me two weeks ago.

I could not help but to think how wrong he was. My brother and I learned to make life decisions based off us, to not allow others influence our beliefs about how we want to live our lives. To be independent, to have learned from our mistakes instead of boasting in our achievements, to be humble. 

“Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments. Did you know that?” Denzel Washington said, University of Penn State Commencement address. “I did not either— because #1,001 was the light bulb… Fall forward.”

We learned that in this life even though your ideal plans fail that there is always something to fall forward on. That in order to achieve something you never had before, you have to do something you never did, and if that means failing 1,000 times to achieve one goal it is okay.

My parents raised my brother and I to be not rich because of our earnings, but to be rich in our own way. To be rich because we are surrounded by positive people who respect and love us and by doing what makes us happy and holding on to it. To know that we can change the world not by fear but by acceptance and understanding. 

I would not have became the person I am today without the continuing love and support of my parents or without the awe-inspiring professors at Oakland University. 

As my two years are coming to an end at Oakland, I am proud to say that throughout my college career I have been graced with such professors who became mentors. It was a blessing to have been accepted to Oakland University, but it was an honor to have been able to learn from astonishing professors to have respect not only for them, but to have gained the respect of them.