To the college freshman walking around campus clueless and with the lanyard and I.D. card,
We know who you are. We know who you are without even asking you what year you're in. We swore when we were freshmen that we wouldn't smirk at the cheesy lanyards and the helpless gazes on your faces, but we do. (And don't worry, you will too) We don't do it to be mean, we WANT you to ask us for directions or how hard your classes are going to get. We WANT you to feel safe and secure and like you can be yourself.
We do it because we remember being you. We remember being lost. We remember being scared. We remember feeling like those four years are going to drag. We remember what it was like when we swore that we would keep our social life and we WOULDN'T gain the freshman 15 (yeah, right). We remember being you and somewhere deep down, we are a little jealous of you.
If I had a dollar for every time someone older than me said "these four years are going to fly by," I would roll my eyes and tell myself that they had no idea what they were talking about.
Newsflash... They were right.
It's not going to be all fun. You're going to have the bad days and the fights with your roommates. You're going to want to drop everything and go home because you can't go one more day without your mom. You're going to have the late nights and you're going to fail tests. You're probably going to have more days where you skip class because you're too stressed and need a break than you can even imagine. You're going to spend a good week, if not more, thinking about dropping out or changing your major. You're going to be so excited to be done. You are going to count down the days until your senior year.
But, then senior year comes. And I promise that the whirlwind of emotions you feel as a new freshman cannot compare to the emotions you feel as you start your senior year. Senior year of college is the most bittersweet feeling that you will ever experience. You spent four whole years waiting for these days to come and now that they're here, you wish time would slow down just a little. You'll start your graduation countdown and you're going to start applying to jobs.
Amid all of the excitement, it'll hit you. You wish you could go back and tell your clueless, wide-eyed, freshman self to slow down. To take it all in. To make a couple more friends. Hold a couple more doors. Apply for a couple more scholarships. Tell a couple more professors "thank you." To spend the late nights with your friends. To call home a little more. To not skip class. To study a little harder. To make more memories. To say "yes" more. To just enjoy the moment and not worry so much about when graduation comes.
We know you want it to go fast, but someday you'll be in our shoes and you'll wish you could go back and do a few things over.
