I didn’t always love Temple University.
If you had asked me how I felt about this school during my freshman and sophomore years, I would’ve said I strongly disliked it (for the most part). I applied here as a safety school, it was not my first choice by any means. My first two years were rough with roommate situation, trying to make friends, and being in a unhealthy relationship. But, it was a trip roughly 6,000 miles overseas that made me fall in love with life again and Temple University as a whole. I got to study abroad in Rome for six weeks when my sophomore year ended, and I met a lot of new people and made new lifelong friends. I’m now set to graduate in May with a bachelor’s degree from Temple University, and I could not be more proud and honored.
Let’s start with my senior year of high school. I knew I wanted to do broadcast journalism because I was very passionate about the Phillies, and as a teenager, I thought it would be perfect to be able to actually get paid to talk about the Phillies as a career. In high school, I was so fixated on wanting to go to a state school, like Penn State or Michigan State. I wanted to go to a huge school with a big name and a good football team. Those were pretty much my only college requirements. I remember Michigan State was the very first school I heard back from, AND they accepted me! I was so set on going there until I found out how much it would cost to go there. One day, I visited Temple with my grandfather, and we just walked around the campus. I was nervous because I did not at all fall in love with this school; to me, it was just a bunch of buildings put together, and I had no idea what they were (p.s. Always do a guided tour if you can). But when the time got closer to needing to make a decision, I accepted my offer letter from Temple because it made the most sense being in-state and with my major and being the perfect distance from home, and I ultimately think it was the best decision I have ever made in my life.
When I started my freshman year, my youngest sister Shannon was one and a half years old, and my other sister Anna was only three years old. I had two younger brothers, Koby, who was 12, and Kayden, who was nine. I’ve always been extremely close with my sisters since they were born and have gotten closer with my brothers as they’ve gotten older. I knew that for college, I needed to be close to them because I couldn’t move far away for school and miss these four important years of their lives. Since my hometown in Montgomery County is only 50 minutes from Temple, I’m able to go home often and almost whenever I want to see my siblings. I have frequently gone home to see Koby’s basketball games, which I love watching, and I’ve been able to go home on the weekends and have movie nights with my sisters and attend their birthday parties. When I am on the phone with my dad, sometimes my sisters will be yelling in the background, “KyKy, when are you coming home? KyKy can you come home this weekend?” and almost every time I can put time aside for those upcoming weekends to go home and spend some time with them.
I lived in Morgan South freshman year, and looking back on it, I had some fun times. But if you had asked me when I was 18 and 19 years old, I would’ve said I was extremely unhappy and that Temple was not for me. I came into college dating my high school boyfriend, who was two years younger than me, and I was extremely unhappy with him. I hung out with him almost every single day freshman year, which was the worst thing I ever did because it prevented me from making new friends and becoming close with my roommates and the people who lived on our floor. I lived in a dorm with two other girls who became inseparable best friends our first semester. I felt excluded and like the odd one out the entire time which really sucked. The second semester rolled around, and we got our fourth roommate, Anna, which helped the dynamic a lot. I was having more fun and getting along with everyone better.
Sophomore year arrived, and I lived in an off-campus apartment with one roommate who’s been one of my closest friends since elementary school. I also decided to go out for informal sorority recruitment since Anna was also doing it. If you had asked me even three months before this, I would’ve laughed at the thought of being in a sorority and going through recruitment. I met with three organizations, got a bid from all three, and chose Delta Phi Epsilon as the sorority I wanted to be a part of for the rest of my college career. It kept me busy this semester, which was a positive experience since my boyfriend ended our relationship. After a few more months of not getting along, fighting, and him cheating, I ended up getting broken up with and heartbroken in a way I’d never experienced before. I felt extremely alone in my bedroom at school and my bedroom at home. I wouldn’t be able to go out at night with friends without crying, and my dad forced me to commute to school for a week since I was unable to take care of myself and eat anything. At home, he let me sleep in his bed with my stepmom and sisters even though he had to get up around 4-5 am every morning to work outside all day, and he would force-feed me buttered noodles even if I wasn’t hungry. This made me not love Temple in any way. I did not have many friends, and I now had no boyfriend and constantly felt alone. We broke up in November, and it didn’t fully hit me, and I wasn’t broken until the second semester when it felt more serious. Also, during this time, my uncle died of cancer, which led me to think I should start therapy, and I had my very first session on his funeral day.
The second semester was really rough for me still due to this. But I did have my first sorority recruitment in January, and it was actually a lot of fun. I got to interact with many new girls in my chapter and made new friends, and I got to take a lot of pictures that I get to look back on. The Eagles also did well this season, so I got to storm Broad Street for the very first time in my life because they were the NFC Champions. Recruitment was ending at the same time the Eagles had just won. So we sprinted home from recruitment, changed into green, and took the subway down to City Hall. It was an amazing experience; I’ve never seen anything like it. Like really, how many college students can say they’ve experienced something like this?
This was the time when I finally got to study abroad in Rome. I could write an entire paper on being abroad alone, but it’s easy to say this healed me completely, and I appreciated life in such new ways. I found myself again. I lived with six other girls who went to Temple who ended up being my best friends, and to this day some of them are still my friends and are even considered my best friends. We would go out to eat all the time, study at a local cafe, walk around Rome for hours, go to bars in Rome, and then end most of those nights with McDonald’s (which is much better out there than here in the States). I remember being slightly intoxicated in these Ubers traveling around Rome late at night with my friends and just thinking how lucky I was to be doing this and how loved I truly felt by all these people I met. My favorite thing we would do in Rome was go to an American bar called “Scholar’s.” We would also get slightly intoxicated and sing karaoke on a little stage in front of the entire bar. That experience truly made me realize how much I loved my life and how much there was to it. We also traveled to other cities such as Brussels, Amsterdam, Florence, Venice, Barcelona, and a few others. These were the best six weeks of my entire life, and I was the happiest version of myself that I’ve ever seen in my life. I didn’t feel an ounce of sadness while being out here. I was constantly happy and thriving the entire time. When those six weeks were over, I went back to Temple a little over a month later with a new group of friends, amazing memories, and a much better outlook on life.
When Junior year hit, I knew school needed to get more serious, and I needed to be doing more for my major. I had volunteered for OwlSports Update in previous semesters but was nervous and didn’t really get involved. I finally took Matt Fine’s class and was so glad I got to do it. I was able to attend many Temple athletic events, interview players and coaches, and go live for TUTV. This made me realize that this is exactly what I want to do when I graduate. I also happened to get an internship with the Philadelphia Union as a Partnership Marketing Intern for the semester, which I absolutely loved. I got extremely lucky with this internship. I was lying in bed one day, and my friend sent me a screenshot of her texts with one of the Union’s marketing coordinators saying she needed an intern for the semester. My friend didn’t want the internship, so I took it even though I didn’t know the first thing about marketing and had very little Union/MLS knowledge. I also started living with a new group of friends this semester who are some of my closest friends now, and we had the time of our lives. These girls helped me love Temple and made me realize its full potential.
At the end of this semester, I had a Zoom call with Matt Fine, who offered me the role of beat reporter for OwlSports Updates’ basketball show, Courts In Session, for the upcoming semester. It was one of the best calls I have ever gotten in my life. I was so happy and excited. I loved this role of being able to MMJ packages and get a lot of on-air time every Tuesday at noon. Without Temple, I may not have had this same opportunity elsewhere.
Senior year started, and I was living in the same house with two of the same girls and two other girls who had been our friends already. I also started my internship at WPHL17, which felt like such a huge accomplishment, getting an internship at a news station in a top-five market. I was waking up at 2:30 a.m. twice a week to get to the station at 3:45 a.m., but I absolutely loved being there. I got media access for Flyers games through this internship and went into players’ locker rooms and filmed the post-game interviews, it was so cool. I also took Temple Update that semester as a class to learn more about the news side of reporting versus just sports. There are a lot more jobs open to news reporting versus just sports, so I knew I needed to learn more about the news side of things to better my job opportunity post-grad. During this time, the Phillies finally won the N.L. East. It was so exciting to see the team doing so well after watching them suffer for as long as I can remember and sitting in 100-degree weather with pounding sun, and watching them get absolutely destroyed. Unfortunately, Red October was cut short due to them losing in the N.L.D.S. This meant it was time for the Eagles to shine. They had an amazing season and even ended up winning the Super Bowl! I got to storm Broad Street – not once – but twice, and attend the Eagles parade. Being in Philadelphia at this time was electric. There is truly no city like it. I also started talking to a new boy at the end of the first semester of my senior year. I was unsure about us dating since it was very new, and I was unsure about my post-grad plans and where I would potentially get a job. But all I knew at the time was that I really enjoyed spending time with him and talking to him every day. We only got the chance to hang out one time over winter break, which was enough time to make me realize how much I missed him when we weren’t together. We spent every day together the first week when we got back from break and eventually ended up dating. I realized that my feelings for him were strong enough to make a long-distance relationship work after college if necessary since he still has one more year at Temple. Luckily, he felt the same way. Without Temple, I would not have found the person that I love so much. This is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had with someone in my life, and words can’t express how much he means to me. Now, in my last and final semester of college, I secured an internship at WGAL 8 out in Lancaster (bit of a drive), and I am the Sports Desk Anchor for Temple Update. These two were also big accomplishments. I tried out for the Sports Desk Anchor role and actually got it. I was really proud of all the hard work I did the previous semester to get to this point because I saw how it truly paid off. Everyone at WGAL is very nice and welcoming. I’ve made many connections there and am getting a lot of experience at this news station.
The article 5 Advantages of Going to College in the City written by Jason Patel, stated that “Big cities typically mean big businesses. Going to school in a busy, thriving city gives you access to more internship and career opportunities. Not only will you have more opportunities, but you’ll likely have higher profile opportunities too” (Patel 2023). I agree with this statement completely because I do not think I would have the same opportunities and experiences at all if I went to a state school out in the middle of nowhere. For example, if I had gone to Penn State, I would not have gotten the opportunity to intern at a news station in a top-five market or with a professional soccer team. I would not have gotten to storm Broad three separate times. I couldn’t take the subway down to tailgates or Phillies games. Going to a school in the city gave me a new love and appreciation for it.
Throughout my eight semesters at Temple, I can happily say that I’ve done and accomplished everything I could dream of and even more. Temple has given me a new love for the city of Philadelphia, my future bridesmaids, the person I can see spending the rest of my life with, and hopefully, a job very soon.
Thank you, Temple.
Sources:
https://www.niche.com/blog/5-advantages-of-going-to-college-in-the-city