You are about to enter one of the biggest milestones in your life. Yes, I understand that you just graduated high school, and congrats on that by the way. Now you are on your way to your freshman year of college! I was in your shoes just a year ago, so I can understand the excitement. Everything is going to be incredibly different from the past 18 years of your life. You now are let off the leash completely and are blessed with new choices; freedom to do what you please. However, this also means that you are going to be taking on a lot of responsibility such as, making choices on your own some will be tempting and some will be easy.

You are going to learn through trial and error. Trust me, there is a lot of error. At first these failures will seem like the absolute end of the world. However, it may come as a surprise to you, that you need these. That’s right, you need these. This is a huge year of growth and learning. You will be figuring out who you are as person, even if you feel like you have it figured out, you probably haven’t. These mistakes have meaning and serve a purpose in your freshman year experience. “You live and learn,” as you must have heard many times in your life. Now, I must remind you of some things you must keep in mind when coming across these inevitable mistakes:

1. Mistakes are mistakes. You’re not purposely doing it. You’re allowed to mess up, as long as you learn from it. Please learn from it. Repeating the same action over and over again is stupidity, not a mistake. Learn from these experiences and they will be worth something. They no longer serve as meaningless events, but become lessons.

2. It's going be frustrating and irritating. They appear to be road blocks, and they should feel this way. You are going to want to cry, scream and give up. Don’t. If they didn’t give such a negative feeling, you would probably repeat the same ugly gesture yet again. We don’t want that, do we? The rewarding feeling you feel when you try something again and succeed after learning from your mistake would feel no where near as amazing.

3. Don’t be too hard on yourself. These are minor slips and you shouldn’t dwell on them for the rest of your day. They won’t matter in a year. Hell, they probably won’t even matter in two days. Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself and move on.

4. It's not the end of the world. One day you will look back at all these petty mistakes and thank your younger self for being so courageous and adventurous. You will be at peace with these slip ups. Mistakes make funny memories and stories to relate your gathered wisdom.

5. Just keep trying. As long as you’re trying your best, do not punish yourself over your mistakes. Keep pushing to improve yourself, learn to accept your mistakes, take accountability and move on. This is the process in becoming an adult. Let’s be honest, even adults don’t really know what they’re doing either. They’re just keeping their cool as they manically figure things out along the way through trial and error.

Mistakes result from taking risks and finding your path in life. A person never stops learning, therefore they never stop the trial and error process. Sometimes this process ends in success and sometimes it ends in failure. If you end in failure, pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Find out where you went wrong and fix it next time. It’s not a bad thing if you get some knowledge out of it. Mistakes are normal. Mistakes are OK. Remember you’re doing great. You rock. Keep growing, and finding yourself. You’ll be

happy with what you find.