If I could share my one biggest realization with every incoming college student, it would be this: college is about the little things. The quicker you realize this, the sooner you can begin to really take them in, because, coming from a junior, it goes by crazy fast.

It may seem now like getting a degree is the light at the end of a very long tunnel. It is, after all, what you'll be working towards over the next four years or so. Maybe you came into college expecting huge "college-y" things to define your next four years, like getting a degree, or going out to crazy parties, or landing your dream job, or meeting the love of your life, or finding out who the heck you really are now that you're finally on your own and free to be you.

While yes, these things do of course matter, you should also really get used to taking in the smaller things. When you're 50 and living the daily grind, you won't remember the Saturday you spent in the library hunched over your textbooks.

You will remember ditching the textbooks to make a midnight mozzarella stick run to Arby's, or that time you went "fountain hopping" and splashed around for a few minutes in freezing cold ankle deep water, or that time you stayed up all night with your best friends watching... well, Friends.

You'll remember playing Frisbee on the front lawn of your residence hall, or chilling in a hammock on the main quad, or going to dinner three times in one day because it's pancake day at the dining hall and you still have room for one more strawberry chocolate-chip masterpiece. You'll remember ditching class to play with therapy puppies in training on the quad, and the energy campus seemed to have once the leaves starting changing colors.

The big things matter. They do. But they won't make up the memories or the "best time of my life" moments.

Soak up the day to day causes for happiness and the random little adventures. I guarantee that the time you and your friends went to 5 different thrift stores looking for ugly Christmas sweaters will mean more to you in the long run than spending that extra hour behind a computer screen.

You have the rest of your life to handle the big stuff. Enjoy your freedom, and while you can, enjoy the little things.