In high school, college often feels like a mystical, mysterious idea that will never actually become a reality. But once move-in day actually comes around, it's almost too good to be true. As you kiss your parents goodbye and try to convince your mom that you'll be home sooner than she'd expect, you start to embrace your newfound freedom as an “adult."
You introduce yourself to your new neighbors and soon enough you find yourself making plans to go out that night. After all, homework is not a realistic concept just yet. You go through your closet and try to find the cutest going out clothes in order to impress all the college boys. Before you know it, you're in a pack of strangers headed towards an off-campus party at a location you are tracking via Google Maps. You take about five wrong turns until you find some sketchy-looking house with so many people inside that they spill out onto the front yard. This, you think to yourself, this is college. You make your way inside to find that you can have all the beer and alcohol you can find, for free.
The next morning is a bit of a blur, but you know you somehow made it back to your dorm and managed to order a pizza. You check your phone to find several missed calls from one of your friends, and an unsent text message to that hookup from your hometown.
As the weeks go on you find yourself meeting more and more people who you think you could become good friends with. You make it a point to hang out with them and try really heard to remember which part of Chicagoland they're from.
The middle of the semester comes around and you've finally fallen into a routine that balances academics and a social life. Because of this, you finally decide to find that one thing called the gym. Unless you're preventative, the freshman 15 is a very real thing.
With your new interest in getting healthy you decide to start examining your diet and try to eat healthier too. You go to the dining hall for the first time since the beginning of the diet, determined to find a not too terrible, healthy dinner. Unfortunately, no one told you that wilted lettuce and questionable chicken slices are about as good as you'll get some nights in the dining hall.
Soon enough you find that your usually stressful college workload seems to slow down for once. You take this opportunity to start watching that new season of House of Cards or maybe a few classic movies on Netflix. Wrong move. One episode turns into four episodes, hours turn to days, and soon that light workload turns into a paper and three exams you've neglected to study for -- all because you needed to figure out what the fifth season finale of Friends was about.
In an effort to not be as lazy, you take on the daunting task of doing laundry. Which one is the dryer, again?
It's a given that most freshman will change their major after they enroll in classes, given that a good percentage of students come in as exploratory majors, not really knowing what they want to do with their lives. In fact, the University of La Verne has found that 50 to 70 percent of students change their major at least once, and most will change their major at least three times before they graduate. After a while of searching for what you would like your future to look like, almost anything seems like a good option.
When the end of the semester comes along, the level of stress is unlike anything you have ever experienced before. Study guides and final projects have you staying up until the sun comes up, and you begin questioning why you are putting yourself through this in the first place.
The week before finals consists of not being able to find spare seats in the library and ordering pizza so many nights in a row that, for the first time, you think the food court may sound more appealing.
But, before you know it, your first semester is gone and you have about three and a half weeks before you get to do it all over again.
