Your freshman year of college is more than just learning how to wake up early and study for exams. It's the first year away from everything you used to know. College is like this alternate universe where you can wear pajamas and eat a sub in the middle of class and somehow someone will say, "you are so beautiful!" No one tells you what to expect other than, "beware of the community showers." So what is it that my 18-year old version of me would have loved to have known?

I wish someone would have told me that it's okay to feel out of place. That this out-of-place feeling is exactly what you should feel.

In fact, that's the thing about your first year of college that is so significant. You feel so out-of-place that you have no choice but to make a place for yourself. Even if this means trying new things that make you cringe such as attending social events in your dorm. Feeling out-of- place is the thing you makes you walk nervously out on a limb, praying you don't fall. But that limb? How satisfying it is when you conquer it.

I wish someone would have told me that someday you will miss that dorm room. Even though you hate it, even though it feels like a prison cell, someday you will miss it. Because in that first year of college, that dorm room is your safe haven. That solitary confinement room becomes a place of rolling-on-the-floor-laughing and tears. There will come a night that you break down, that you let everything out, and I guarantee it will be in your dorm room. So play your music loud, sit naked, and order as much take-out as you want; you're paying a couple thousand for it anyways.

I wish someone would have told me to not dwell on a guy from back home. There is a reason that you are in college and he is not. Remember that. Don't chase after a guy that is 70 miles away from you. Don't get caught up in the hopes that the "bad boy" from high school with no job is going to be the one that saves you. He isn't. The only thing he is going to do is keep you awake and worrying.

I wish someone would have told me that you will find yourself. Then six months late you will find yourself again. And then a week later, you will once again find yourself. You meet so many new people and find yourself immersed in so many different situations, that the first year is just a huge progression. It's not the year that is going to fully define you, but make you malleable.

I wish someone would have told me that there will come a day that you look back and realize that honestly, it wasn't that bad. Sure, there were 8 a.m. classes everyday but freshman year was just a starter course. When you're 21, taking 18 credit hours, have four pages due by the end of the week; somehow that first year of college seems like a walk in the park.

So here I am to say it. Young grasshoppers, your first year of college is a rite of passage. Go to the 8 a.m. classes, attend the "boring" social events, make friends with your polar opposites. It's college-life, we're all in this struggle together. But in all honestly, I wouldn't relive my freshman year even if you paid off my student loans.