I walked onto the campus in the last months of my junior year in high school. Shaking slightly from a concoction of nerves and anticipation, I clenched the spine of my marble notebook. It was my first college visit, my first time stepping onto a university with the intention of examining it like a specimen in a case. The trees arched overhead and I was swept away into the beauty of the academic landscape in front of me. Little did I know, I had just fallen in love.
Now that I am a junior in college instead of high school, I can tell you that I am very much in love. I am in love with everything that my college experience offers me. I am in love with my best friends, my roommates, the laughs that I have had on the quad at 2 am. I am in love with the deterioration of my high school friendships, the messy breakups, the emotional breakdowns in the middle of the library. I am madly, truly, deeply in love with my college life.
I fell in love with my college experience when I failed my first test, when my classmates clapped for me after my first forty-five minute presentation. I fell in love with college the night I laughed so hard with my best friends I had a headache the next day. I fell in love with my college experience after my fifth all-nighter, after my sixteenth chewed-up pen cap, in the middle of my eighth cup of coffee in a twelve-hour timespan. I fell in love with my college experience when I arrived on move-in day and I have not stopped falling ever since.
Here is my advice to you. Fall in love with your college experience. Whether it's your top choice or your safety school, fall in love with your university. Fall in love with the campus, the buildings, the old mattress you sleep on. Fall in love with the jitters, the pre-test anxiety, the mess your roommate makes on the floor. Be in constant awe of the events happening around you, even if your professor is droning on. Love your crazy nights and your awful, headache-riddled days. Impress yourself and study every detail, whether it is your major or not. Love the homesickness that rolls through you once in awhile, but learn to call your college your home. Two, three, four, five years of college, savor them. Reach out for every second you spend pouring over your textbooks, bashing your head against the wall in the lab. Reach out, fall in love.
College is fleeting, gone with your next breath. Take it all in and fall in love with it. It is the experience of a lifetime.
