Everybody's usually so excited and so eager to get to college for the freedom- it is the first time it's acceptable to move away from your parents. The thought of leaving home and not being under your parents roof makes your head spin of happiness as you're sitting on your bed after a night out with the early curfew of midnight. I had a completely different outlook on this.

Of course I was ecstatic about college. The parties, the boys and the freedom. But what about the people that have been there for you the past 18 years? How am I supposed to live without these people? I don't know how to live on my own. Yeah I can do my own laundry and get myself food, but living on my own is such a scary thought. You graduate, have a killer summer, then it's time to be a real adult. Your whole life changes over one summer. All the sudden your friends are all leaving, you're saying your final goodbyes to your family, and you're shutting the door to your empty bedroom one last time before your life changes completely.

College is all about finding yourself and finding what you love. In college, I found out that I can't go more than a couple hours without talking to someone in my family. I'm that girl in the car that can't get off the phone with my mom because there's so much to tell her and so much to update her on! Talking to my family on FaceTime, or on the phone gives me that home feeling, like I'm not that far away from my family.

The first couple weeks of college were impossible. Meeting new people, trying to find people I liked, and trying to get the hang of this whole college thing and how this whole thing works, on top of homesickness, and being SO poor.

Now it's the middle of the first semester and it's already time to think about housing for next year. Getting a house, or apartment- either way, that's a huge responsibility that I'm not sure if I'm ready to take on yet! College is full of new opportunities for growth, and becoming someone you want to be. Don't take advantage of college, it only comes around once. Take it all in and you'll love every second of it like I do. Take time every single day, call your family, tell them you miss them and you love them. It doesn't seem like a lot, but if your family is anything like mine, it means the world to them.