"The best university is life. It's much cheaper and the food's better too." - Author Unknown

In the fall of 2014. I arrived at a small private college in Florida with a suitcase full of optimism and absolutely no idea what I was doing. I also brought a second suitcase of ill-fitting jeans. Hey, it was 2014.

I had declared a major in graphic design and a minor in advertising, mostly because those words sounded cool and like something from the AMC original series Mad Men. My first design class was called Intro to Typography. Naturally, I assumed we’d be learning how to type faster. Spoiler alert: we did not. To this day, I still type at around 68 words per minute.

The first semester of college smacked me in the face. I remember barely scraping by in a freshman drawing class that I arrogantly assumed I would ace. I got slapped with C's and D's on a regular basis, as I learned that talent is just potential—and potential is nothing without work.