As my 30th birthday approaches, I’ve noticed I’ve been doing a lot more reflecting on my life than I have at any other previous time. Maybe this is because for the first time in my life, I’m starting to feel old.

I mean, my body just doesn’t handle alcohol like it used to. I don’t stay out very late because I’m just too tired. I experience more aches and pains than I ever have before. I even feel that biological clock ticking as more of my husband’s and my friends have started families.

I think it’s fairly common for people as they age to do this type of self-reflection and reevaluate some of the major decisions they’ve made in their lives. For me, I’ve been ruminating about all the experiences I had when I was a freshman here at the University back in 1997.

You see, I’m from Cincinnati, and when I started at the University, I literally knew no one.

I had to step outside my comfort zone not only to adjust to life away from home for the first time, but also to adjust to life in the South.

At this point in my life, I had never eaten Southern staples such as grits, okra and red velvet cake. My vocabulary did not consist of “y’all” or “fixin’ to.” Heck, I had never even seen a Georgia football game or knew what the SEC stood for!

I also remember how different the University was back in 1997. We were on the quarter system rather than semesters, so we attended most classes five days a week for 10 weeks.

O-House was the nicest dorm because the East Campus Village didn’t exist. Ramsey was brand spankin’ new, but unfortunately the lines were just as long as they are today. If we wanted football tickets, we had to camp out the night before the semester started and skip the first day of class.

And if we got sick, we visited Gilbert Hall, the current residence of the Romance Language Department, because the University Health Center had yet to be built.

I look back today and laugh at how clueless and na’ve I was back then. I thought I knew what I wanted out of life, but I quickly realized I didn’t have a clue.

I thought I knew who I was, but this wasn’t the case either. I even thought I knew which University bus would take me to where I needed to go – until I got lost more times than I’d like to admit.

Twelve years later in 2009, I’ve come back to the University to earn my third degree. I’m a very different person today than I was as a freshman. After experiencing a “quarter-life crisis,” I finally know what I want to be when I grow up.

I enjoy writing research papers and get that nerdy rush when I find an important article or study to cite. I take on much more responsibility than I once did, and I like that.

I also have grown quite fond of grits and red velvet cake (okra, not so much), and you might even catch me say, “y’all” when talking to a group.

What’s interesting is as old as I sometimes feel and as much as I’ve grown and matured in these past 12 years, I sometimes still consider myself to be like that clueless and na’ve freshman I once was.

I still do sometimes question who I really am and what I ultimately hope to achieve in life. I still experience pangs of anxiety when I step out of my comfort zone. There are situations in which I think I know everything but realize I know nothing.

But unlike when I was a freshman, I’ve come to terms with three truths that I hope everyone will take to heart: You will grow old, you will grow wiser and you will realize how much you don’t know.

And as I turn 30, I feel just fine growing older, wiser and realizing how much I have yet to learn.

- Betsy Brafman Alpert is a graduate student from Cincinnati studying school counseling.