By Stephen Morisani III ’28, staff writer
From the desert to the valley, every student has a story.
Here at LVC, not everyone is from Pennsylvania; there are students from
Maryland, Delaware, or even New York, and as always, those students will have some extra
adjustments to make living in Annville, Pennsylvania than those that lived in Pennsylvania their
entire life.
But first-year student Azavia Parks is not even from the east side of the Mississippi
River; he traveled over 2,000 miles to attend school here from the city of Tucson, Arizona.
Azavia discovered LVC through mail, and upon looking into it found out about its excellent
exercise science and came in contact with the football coaches for recruitment to the team.
Azavia is currently an exercise science major and a cornerback on the football team.
Azavia grew up in Tucson, a large city in Arizona, where he had over 5000 kids in his school
that he attended from age 3 in Pre-K. Pre-k is a requirement where he grew up. It was hot all year
round save December and January, which it might have rarely snowed but never stuck for long
after falling.
In his process to decide which school to attend, Azavia looked into the campuses of each school
and LVC’s stuck out.
He liked that the campus was small.
“I don’t want to have to travel to a bunch of places to get class.”
His high school campus was small, and he wanted to keep that consistency.
Since his time here in the Valley, Azavia has noticed geographical changes. He noticed that the
towns here are not that far away from each noting the town of Lebanon is only fifteen minutes
from campus.
In Arizona, you get to the next town, say Vail, that’s 30 minutes from Tucson.”
He said that the large towns were more like cities and that there really are not any rural towns in between.
“The football team treated me like family since day one.”
Azavia did have one major adjustment that was not easy: the change in time zone. Coming from
Pacific time to Eastern is a loss of three hours. He felt groggy and slow to wake up in the
mornings.
He says once the day starts it feels like it flies by fast compared to back home. He said
it was extremely hard at first and he had to adjust his morning routine and wake up a lot earlier
than here. His roommate assisted him in his adjustments.
He said it took him until a few days ago to fully adjust to the time change.
Adjusting to college can be hard, but Azavia has found a home, even if it is 2000 miles away
from where he was born.