That Slippery Slope

Coming to college as a first year undergraduate student was one of the more memorable experiences of my life. There's no need to run down the list of cliches, new beginnings, the ability to change oneself to be anything you want to be, etc. Hell, I even came to college complete with my own theme song:

Someday I'll be
Something much more
Cause I'm bigger than my body
Gives me credit for

Yes that's right, good ol' John Mayer and me took the trek up to State together for the first time. I had high hopes, in fact I still do, I'm not that much of a wiley veteran to the college scene that I've become that jaded... yet.

Regardless, there are some lessons that I learned (and am learning) at college the hard way. The one I'm struggling with right now is how everyone adapts to the college life differently.

It's repeatedly stressed that those first few weeks are the most important time, as that is when everyone is feeling unsettled, and everyone is looking to break into a routine, a set little group of people to spend time with, and a little piece of order in our chaotic college existences. This is more or less what happened to a guy I considered a real good friend of mine at the time.

We'll call him Hamza, since I don't know any Hamzas here. Hamza and I were real close friends in high school, we spent a lot of time together, and our parents were close family friends as well, which ensured that we got sent to the same little desi family gatherings. When it was discovered that both Hamza and I were going to attend Michigan State, both our parents were excited, expecting us two good muslim boys to be able to look out for each other. After all, what's a better bastion of Islam in a college setting then a close muslim friend to keep you in check right?

Not so much. Through a few different silly little circumstances, we ended up on opposite sides of campus. Anyone who's been here though knows the colossal amount of effort it requires to get from one side of campus to the other without a car. As a result him and I were subjected to very different sets of friends, which culminated in him and I accruing a very different set of experiences in those first few weeks/months of college life.

The reason I bring all this up is that after that small period of time, I was pretty upset that though him and I had grown up in such similar environments, with similar parents (as far as religiousness went), and both attended the same masjid regularly, that now him and I had been molded into such starkly contrasting characters.

Now I'm not saying that Hamza did a total switcheroo here, and I'm not trying to paste myself up as the shining example of morality, but it was fairly evident that our priorities were drastically different by this point.

What really shook up my Mountain Dew though (and I hate having my Mountain Dew shaken up) was how our attempts at being religious in high school almost seemed futile, all that time learning whats right and wrong, halal and haram, makrooh, zabiha, and all that jazz, if it got thrown out the window so abruptly.

How does one fall from grace so quickly, and what concerns me even more, is that had I been in the same situation as him, with the same group of people, would I have ended up the same way? Would I be out doing exactly what he was doing right now?

Though these events took place almost two years ago, the reason it comes back to me is through recent events. Obviously he didn't end up the way he is now as a sudden thing, it had to have been a gradual process, something you're weened into. One thing leads to another leads to another, it's a dangerously slippery slope, one that I've recently wondered if I began sliding down the same treacherous path.

I'm thankful that I'm not that stupidly vulnerable little freshman looking for a good time, and I'm thankful that I wasn't exposed to the same crowd that he had to put up with at the tender age of eighteen. As I stated earlier though, I'm by no means set in my ways and invulnerable to said tempations, I'm no pro at this. I'm smart enough to realize that I'm twenty and I'm stupid.

For that reason, along with the multitude of warnings I've been getting from those I consider close, I'm going to back off, and proceed with the utmost caution. They say it only takes one hit of certain drugs to get you addicted. I see no reason why it should be any different here.