As a college freshman, I entered this new phase of my life with certain ideas about college and what it would be like. Although some of my ideas turned out to just be straight up false, there are some that turned out to be pretty true.

One of these that ended up being brutally true was the infamous finals week. Like all college students, the last two weeks of the semester were full of day-long study sessions, last-minute cramming, and tons and tons of mental stress. Now that my first semester of college has ended, I have been able to take the time and truly mull over the start of my college experience. Here are the three feelings that I have experienced now that finals are over for this semester.

1. Relief.

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Of course, the first thing I felt after I finished my last final exam was clearly relief. After all of the sleepless nights I spent reading, studying and cramming, it felt exhilarating finally being rid of all that stress. Even before finals started, I was burden day in and day out about the thought of sitting in several lecture halls and having to take one test that could very well make or break my first ever final grades of college. But now that it has all passed, I am constantly consumed with massive waves of happiness and relief; Happiness from sleeping in my own room at home and relief from the fact that I can go to sleep without planning out a meticulous study regiment for the next day.

2. Togetherness.

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UCF has one of the largest student populations out of all public universities in the country with more than 60,000 students. Now obviously, I don't even know a tiny fragment of all the people enrolled at UCF, but during finals week, it's as if I know exactly what everyone is going through. Looking at all the exhausted, hungry, and frustrated faces around campus made me realize just how much people were stressing about passing their exams, and how similar it was to mine. Although I didn't know them, it did make me feel a certain sense of camaraderie with my fellow UCF students. When I think back to the many late nights I spent at All Knight Study, Student Union, and the TCH building, I most certainly feel a whole new level of closeness with all the people that I spent these very late nights with.

3. Hope.

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Now that all the stressing is over, for now, I've found myself having this new feeling of hope for my future in college. Going into college, I was told all of these terrifying horror stories about finals week, but now that I've experienced this foretold "week of hell," it's not as bad as I thought. Don't get me wrong, those last two weeks of the semester were hell, but it wasn't nearly as horrible as I've been told or what I'd thought. Although this was only my first ever college semester and the classes are only going to get harder and harder, I'm hopeful that now that I've been through this before, each semester will be a new learning experience and would only help me improve for the next one.