If you are anything like me, you've been going to the same school, had the same friends, and go to the same ma and pa restaurant for the past 10 years. The most amount of change you have had in your life is having Captain Crunch for breakfast instead of the usual Rice Krispies. Everything was so simple, I would go to school in the fall, work my way through the year, look forward to summer break, then wait for school to start again. It was a constant cycle. Then, I became a senior and everything was about to change.

Senior year in itself includes enough change. The classes I took became more important because they were counting towards my college education. The teachers taught me valuable life lessons because they knew I was about to leave the safe setting of high school. I might as well have not gone to half of my other classes because we would just goof around. There was so much freedom compared to my other three years of high school. But with all this freedom came all kinds of decisions, confusion, and unknowingness. Those feelings came from one thing: college.

Deciding which college you want to go to is like figuring out where you want to live for the next four years of your life (or maybe more). It is a huge decision that will create a plethora of change. I have gone through this summer thinking very hard about this change. You understand the major changes of going into college, but there are some you don't think about until you are actually getting ready for it.

One small thing that changes drastically that you probably wouldn't normally think about is your bedtime routine. Now you are sharing a small room with another person. Most of the things you did at home are probably not going to be acceptable in dorm rooms. Do you listen to music before you go to sleep at night? Make sure your roommate is okay with that. Do you read before you go to sleep? Better make sure your light doesn't bother your roommate. What do you wear to bed? It's important that your roommate is comfortable with that. Do you not do your homework until midnight right before you go to bed? Better make sure your roommate doesn't want to go to sleep at 9. Do you have 15 alarms to wake you up in the morning? Well, me too. But hopefully, that's not annoying to your roommate.

Here's a change that will shock you when you are trying to buy items for your dorm room: space. I used to look at all the cute designer dorm rooms on Pinterest, thinking I am going to do mine just like theirs. Those people must have gone to schools where the freshman dorms were more like hotels, they are huge! Remember that super cute matching chair, foot rest, and table your mom got you? I don't know if it's going to work, sweetheart. My dorm room is about 10x11. When you have two beds, two dressers, two wardrobes, two desks, a mini-fridge, and a microwave already in your dorm room there isn't a whole lot more you can do with it. Comparing it to my room I have now where I actually have room to breath, this is going to be a major change that I hope I get used to.

One of the last things I have realized that's really going to change is going to a bathroom. In my house, I have my own bathroom I use that is about 10 feet away from my bedroom door. In college, I will have to make that long trek over to the bathrooms where I will share it with 30 other girls. You can imagine how bad 30 girls in the morning getting ready in a bathroom would be. Also, I am a forgetful person so I guarantee I will be making about 3 trips in the morning from the bathroom back to my room because I forgot something I need to help me get ready. How privileged do we have it now to be so close to our own bathroom?

College will hold much change, and I'm sure it will be difficult to adjust. But college is a learning experience, and some say it is the best years of your life. As I countdown the days to my move in day (15 days), I not only acknowledge these changes but embrace them as part of the college experience. I look forward to going to a new school, gaining new friends, and finding new special restaurants.

College is a major change, but Mandy Hale says it best; "Change can be scary, but you know what's scarier? Allowing fear to stop you from growing, evolving, and progressing." I think that is what college is all about: growing, evolving, and progressing.

Maybe a little change is a good thing.