I thought that the summer between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college would be strange, new, and unexpected; that everything would change. But I was wrong. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college feels way more different and an adjustment than last year. I say this because, last year, I had no idea what to expect. I did not know what was going to happen how my life was going to be different or how I was going to be different. I had something to look forward to. But, this summer I look back on the first year of college and I see not only how I have changed, but also how my friends from high school have changed and how our relationships changed. College changes people, in good ways and bad ways. College is really the first time that you are alone and independent from people from your home or your hometown. It is a change, and people change with that. Myself, I was told by my friends that I had seemed more calm and relaxed when I came back home, which to me is odd since my anxiety has seemed to have spiked in college. But to them, I had changed. And they had seem to changed as well in our time apart. I was so freaked out that my relationships with my friends would be different, that it would be harder since I had not seen them in a couple of months. But for some of us, we picked up right where we had left off, and some others, the distance had changed us, and now we were not as close to each other. My mother had always told me, “you have to always work at relationships, you cannot expect that they will always be the first to reach out, you have to make that effort yourself.” And I had always tried to follow her lead, and I still do. I will reach out to my friends asking to hang out or go to the beach or something. And usually we will all meet up, but I can tell that things between us have changed.

Not just my relationships have changed with my friends, but also with my parents. I give my parents a lot more respect now that I am away from home, I see more of the things that I have to do on my own now that they are not with me at school when I am upset or do something wrong and need help with. I realize how I have changed, affects how I am with other people and how they are around me. This is a lesson that I have learned repeatedly from my parents, how I act and my actions, affects other people.

We do not always realize how we have changed. To ourselves, we could think that we have not changed at all. We do not always realize the little actions that we do affect others and our decisions. This is a part of how we all change and grow up. We do not always notice these things. But most likely, your friends will.