Whether you’re heading into your sophomore year of college or settling into your retirement home, I’m sure you can still vividly remember this huge stepping stone in your life: Freshman Move In Day. Aside from your wedding day, I can’t think of another event in which you’ll experience such insane anticipation. After the graduation parties start to settle down and your high school diploma begins to seem real, the concern sets in. What if I get lost on my way to class and have to walk in late? What if I don’t like any food in the dining hall? What if my roommate is crazy? The list goes on.
With these doubts still controlling your daily thoughts you somehow manage to make it to the final week of summer before you’re dealt your next unknowing hand. The weeks start to fly and suddenly you’re at the final send off dinner with your friends. The last night in your own bed seems extra long probably due to the fact you laid awake the whole night eager about what the next morning would bring. Inevitably the morning has to come, the car has to be packed and you have to set out on your new journey.
When you show up at your school hours later you’re still a giant bundle of nerves and who can blame you? For some reason the loud RA’s cheering while you register in the lobby seem to calm you down immensely. You make your way up to your floor (praying it’s a low level since God knows they never let you use the elevator) dropping clothes as you go. Then out of the corner of your eye you see it, your name right there alongside your roommates on a worn-down wooden door. The door opens and so do four years of possibilities. You decorate your new home until the sun starts to set and it’s time to say your dreaded, agonizing goodbye to your family and set off on your new adventure.
But this time around as an upperclassman it doesn’t seem so scary, does it? The blind anticipation you dealt with going into freshman year is now replaced by an insane amount of zealous optimism. There are so many things you realize about starting a new year as an upperclassman that you didn’t know before. For starters, instead of being afraid to make new friends, you’ll already have a group of amazing people you’ll be dying to be back in the presence of. Instead of packing your entire basement with storage bins of clothes and all the items Bed Bath & Beyond deems necessary (in June), you’ll wait until two days before you’re supposed to leave and pack much lighter. Lastly, when you hug your parents goodbye and it feels like you're hugging away your entire childhood, this time you’ll realize that your relationship with your family will only get stronger as you go through your college years.
Those little doubts that once brought so much stress into your life are now overcome by your excitement to get back to campus, to your new home. So to those of you incoming freshmen about to experience this firsthand, enjoy this day and embrace all the anxiety it causes you because you’ll never have to feel like it again. To those of you upperclassmen moving in for the second, third or even fourth time around, look out for that little lost freshman with her schedule in hand and point her in the right direction so that she too can eventually feel as at ease on campus as you do now.
