Can I let you in on a little secret?

The University of Illinois wasn’t my first choice.

Or my second.

Or my fifteenth.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t mean this as any sort of slight toward our school. I’m more than proud to attend my parents’ alma mater. I’ve been a die-hard fan of the Fighting Illini since I could fit into an eensie-weensie orange-and-blue onesie.

But I do know that the University of Illinois was once the last place I wanted to be. I didn’t want to spend four more years with 40 or 50 of my high school classmates. I wanted my parents to have to fly to visit me, to live as far away from catty little Park Ridge as humanly possible, to be surrounded by thousands of people I’d never met before in my life.

I was the consummate underachiever in high school, compiling an impressive extracurricular resume, excellent test scores and an unweighted GPA a few notches below a B average. I was, to put it nicely, a head case. Even my guidance counselor couldn’t give me an idea of what college could possibly want me in its class of 2016.

So I applied to a collection of 20 (crazy, right?) schools that had no noticeable rhyme or reason: places like the football-crazed University of Alabama, tiny and ultra-preppy Washington & Lee, and my dream school, Vanderbilt, to which I applied early decision. I sent a rushed priority application to Illinois — ever the afterthought — and found out that I’d been accepted while attending a fraternity party at Butler. (The cups upon cups of cheap beer in my system, as they so often do, prevented the news from properly registering.)

In February, by some stroke of luck, Vanderbilt said yes. I was ecstatic, but my parents — now faced with the prospect of paying for a college education well out of their budget — felt otherwise and politely requested (read: forced me) that I decline. I had less of an idea of what my future held than ever.

But one equally important piece of mail came to my doorstep during that blustery winter: a completely unexpected scholarship offer from the University of Illinois to cover every cent of my tuition. I couldn’t disregard a free education, even if it meant that I’d be a two-hour drive from home rather than a plane ride away. When William & Mary, my second choice, told me that I’d need to pay full-price, I felt like Tom Cruise in “Risky Business”: “Looks like the University of Illinois!”

So, when I first stepped foot onto our gloriously drab campus eight months ago, I was a man (yet again) with a plan.

Step one: Pledge a quality house.

Step two: Reap the ensuing benefits: reduced-price libations, a seemingly endless social calendar, a group of guys that would always have my back, girls.

Step three: Attempt to go out as many consecutive nights as possible.

Step four: Somehow earn straight A’s while doing all of the above.

After the first few weeks of school, I was well on my way to going four for four. I even hit a bar or two after Mass on Sunday nights.

But this streak couldn’t last too much longer. Fate never seemed to want to work in my favor. Just as I never planned to end up in Champaign, it was inevitable that things wouldn’t go according to plan during my freshman year.

True to form, I caught a particularly nasty strand of mono — that most dreaded college plague — a little less than a month into pledgeship and ended up both out of the fraternity and in bed for the remainder of the semester.

(The plethora of painkillers made the whole ordeal easier, though. I was a Vicodin-induced marshmallow.)

When I returned to school this semester, I felt as aimless as ever. I thought there couldn’t possibly be a world outside the insular community I’d worked so hard to join.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that reality was exactly the opposite.

I dove into writing: I applied for an opinions position at The Daily Illini — something I’d wanted to do since I came to campus — and earned a weekly spot on this very page, joined the music staff at Buzz Magazine and helped to rebuild my once-popular hip-hop blog. I rediscovered my love for playing jazz. I found some of my best friends within the dorm I’d once tried so hard to avoid.

Now, I’m not in a “top house.” I’ve spent every other weekend this semester with my family. I still have the sleep habits of an ER doctor. I don’t have pregames three or four nights a week anymore; instead, I blog and write and read like words are going out of style. My painstakingly developed plans were shredded, stomped on and obliterated.

But to be quite honest, I wouldn’t have wanted college to go any other way.

Adam is a freshman in LAS. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @hercules5.