As we say goodbye to September and welcome October’s brisk weather and fall clothing, we also welcome the real college experience. Believe it or not, we have been back living in the dawg pound for over a month now and we are starting to fall back into our routine lives. To all the freshmen who are still adjusting, that’s OK. It takes a while to get used to a new life in such a short amount of time. By now you have realized that this semester’s syllabus week is over. You have realized what college really is and that somehow you have to balance going out and having fun, finding your solid friend group, making time to study and do well in class, and somehow even getting involved on campus. You've realized that there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything you want to do but somehow you manage. What is most important is that you realize that classes are finally starting to get intense.

College is a whole different monster than high school. Classes are not like high school. You actually have to start doing work now, study, and read the textbooks for class. Also, you can’t forget that there is a lot more homework. You are starting to dig into your core material and it’s about that time of year to start being assigned your group projects for the semester that you just don't have the time to deal with. You have already began to adjust to new types of people and having a new friend group. Your dorm is no longer a strange place that you have just been living in and now you start calling it home. You and your roommate have already begun to learn to live together. Whether you can barley stand each other, or you have a new best friend, the year is still just beginning. By now you have also realized that the food is not as good as they told you it was going to be but you have learned to deal with it. You may be starting to get stressed out but I promise you it will all work out in the end. I am not one for change, but by the time I had to move home for the summer I was not ready to leave because this was my home. This is where my nights turned into mornings with my friends that turned into a second family. That may sound corny now but just wait, you will be saying the same thing.

I say embrace the change because you only get one freshmen year, and as much as you don’t want to be known as the freshman, I would give anything to go back just so I can have another year here. There will be nights where you just want to go out but similar to senior year this is an important year for you. This is where you establish your GPA and figure out what path you will be on here - whether you give yourself a nice cushion for when your classes get hard or you didn’t balance everything well enough and your stuck playing catch up. You need this year to be good for you because next year when your general classes are all finished you’ll be taking the classes that put Bryant on the map and what it is known for. So if you have to sit out a Whiskey Wednesday or a Thursday its okay. You have hundreds of more, but you can’t just fix a grade in a night. When Sunday morning hits, you feel all that stress and don’t think you can make it another week, just remember you are not the only one. Everyone else is feeling the same way. But there is a reason why you are here and looking back years from now all of this will be worth it in the end. So good luck to all of you and keep pushing through the year because I know you can do it.