Nothing prepares you for the last hug goodbye to your parents as they drop off the last box of your perfectly matching dorm room decor. It suddenly hits you that you’re an adult and you are on your own, surrounded by unfamiliar places and faces. You have your high school best friends one phone call away, but you can already feel the way that distance makes the world seem so much bigger. You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and pray that you chose the one place that will make you happiest.
Everyone deserves to find their dream school. I know that I found mine.
1. I know because when I look at the roommates, friends, and family that I’ve created here, I wonder how I ever lived without them, and how I made it through stressful days and wonderful moments without the people who make my world work.
2. I know because my drawers are now crammed and swallowed up in countless articles of school pride, and I’m quite ok with this. In fact, I’ve never had such strong affiliations with college football and basketball, and I’m proud of this drastic leap into the opinionated sports world.
3. I know because despite the way that the hours have somehow strung together into days and months too quickly, I can still remember my very first night here. Laying on my loft in a new place with the brink of adulthood at my fingertips, wondering who’d I’d meet, where I’d go, and how I'd get there.
4. I know because despite the endless applications, essays written, and streams of advice and opinions from everyone around me, I let my first adult decision be my own.
5. I know because when I’m not here, I miss it. I miss the routine and the people and the pace of life. I miss the tiny dorm room, because it’s filled from floor to ceiling with all of the clutter that I find as treasure.
6. I know because when I walk to class on a beautiful spring day, I am still in awe of the beauty of the campus around me and the way that film or words cannot even begin to capture it. Despite being able to navigate campus like the back of my hand, I still feel like a tourist exploring a captivating place in the very best way.
7. I know because when I look through my camera roll, floods of memories overwhelm me. All of the good, bad, and snapchat worthy moments collected in one place, and I don’t even need to see the pictures to remember every single one of them.
8. I know because even when I look at my agenda, a battlefield of scribbled notes, mandatory meetings, and assignment due dates, I feel content. I feel content in knowing that I’m going somewhere, that all of the current work is building up to something called the rest of my life.
9. I know because all I did was blink and freshman year was nearly over. August turned to April and everything inbetween happened so quickly. The days were long but the time was so incredibly short.
10. I know because despite summer vibes in the air and freedom at my reach, I’m not ready to leave. I’m not ready to leave the place, that in a matter of 8 short months, has truly become home.
