Starting college for the first time is a huge milestone in a person’s life. You might be feeling a lot of different emotions and that’s okay. I just finished my fourth week here and I can honestly say it was nothing like I expected. By the end of my first weekend here, I had walked 29,000 steps a day (11 miles), couldn’t figure out my way around campus for the life of me, was dripping sweat in 90% humidity every day, and lost my student ID 4 days in. I was definitely questioning what the hell I was doing wrong here.
Yes, the first week is fun. You are finally away from home, the same place you’ve been living the past 18 years and you gain all of this new freedom. You don’t have mom or dad telling you anymore what you can and can’t do. But at the same time, it can be scary being completely on your own. It’s as if you were just dropped off and thrown in the middle of the ocean and you have to figure out how to swim to stay afloat.
With college comes all of these expectations. You’re going to go to college and do whatever you want and have so much fun every single minute of every day and make so many new friends that you don’t know what to do with yourself. But it takes time to get settled in, and it takes time to make friends. You see all of these people on campus that seem like they have their lives completely figured out and you start to panic thinking that you’re doing something wrong.
Yeah, you meet a lot of people but a lot of people you meet you don’t even remember their names after 5 minutes and likely never see them again. It’s difficult to adapt from your senior year where you just became closer than ever with all of your best friends, to a school out of state where you know no one and start to feel lonely and have no one that you really feel genuinely close to. About half way through the first week I remember thinking everyone else already had their little circles of friends and my roommate and I were going to spend the next four years only having each other, Netflix, and random acquaintances we met at parties now and then.
We had to realize everyone was in the same boat. Some people did come to college already knowing people from their hometown that they clung onto the first week, but they’re also looking for new people to expand their circle of friends too. Most people also aren’t really sure what they are doing. You’ll meet people and figure out pretty quickly who you do and don’t click with. What I’ve learned is making friendships in college takes effort. It’s not like high school where you are forced into seeing the same people at the same times every day and after time you just become friends. You really have to step out of your comfort zone. It might be lonely and scary at first, but now after being four weeks in I couldn’t be happier with my decision to come here and I love every moment of it. I have finally figured out how to swim and I’m confident I’ll be staying afloat for the next four years just fine.
