To the high school student who are waiting on the edge of their seats to get to college: I understand. I get it. High school can be really really rough, but please do not have a perfect picture in your head of what college is.
College is one of the best places to find yourself and, although it may sound cliché and cheesy, it is true. You need to get completely out of your element and out on your own to find you.
It is hard to learn time management. No matter how well you thought that you managed in high school, there will always be someone to do something with. No matter if it is going to get food on campus, getting food off campus, going to the gym or on a run, watching a movie or the always available Netflix, the new friends on social media, the closet that really needs organizing, the friend down the hall who just made popcorn, the groceries or the clothes online that need to be shopped, the dishes or the laundry that needs to be washed, the napping, or pretty much anything else, there is always someone else around who is down to do anything other than homework.
Homesickness will plague you at some point in your college career. No matter how immune you believe yourself to be, you are not. Whether you have spent every summer away from home for as long as you can remember or you think that it just won't happen to you at all, you are mistaken. It happens to everyone at different times during their career. It could hit on the first night, the first weekend, the first month, or during the first semester.
Friends will change. It is OK for this to happen. Although it is really hard at the time, it will all turn out well. Chances are good that your college is much bigger than your high school, so there are a lot more people with a lot more personalities for you to mesh with! You won't mesh with them all, but it's OK.
You will do terribly on a paper that you worked your butt off for and it will hurt. You will feel like dropping out of school, you will dread what your GPA will look like, and you will consider just going home. It is all valid. You will have professors without personality. They will seem like they don't care at all about anything that you do or that you have had the stomach bug for a week. It will be hard. You will be behind and you will have to suck it up. You will need someone to tell you to suck it up because Lord knows that you won't be able to do that after another long day.
You will do things that you never thought that you would ever do. You will change. You will surprise yourself and you will be surprised.
