I felt how every graduated senior felt when I thought about going to college. I felt thrilled to get away from home, heartbroken to leave my best friends, scared about finding new friends, and anxious to start an exciting phase of life. Everyone's excited, everyone's nervous. That's just the way it is!
I learned a lot in my first year of college, with the help of my friends and family. Not only did I realize that everyone goes through their own journey when living away from home, but I realized that you're not supposed to have the exact same experiences as we've seen in TV shows or movies. We shouldn't even have the same journey as our best friends!
For example, I thought that I would get involved in absolutely everything that interested me, including soccer, student government, and some volunteer work and other clubs. Well, a bout of strep throat left me too dehydrated to function, and my hospital visit may or may not have interfered with the activities fair, and (in my opinion) dooming me to a freshman year filled with nothingness. Hence my first lesson: it's hard to put yourself out there. As much as we'd like to be the fearless, independent freshman who is willing to give everything a try and dive into anything and everything without knowing a soul, it gets exhausting after trying it once or twice. And that's okay! We're not supposed to become involved in everything.
I also learned how to truly be responsible for myself. As everyone knows, you're almost completely independent when you move away to college. Our parents might be helping by paying the bills, but it's up to us to actually survive the college environment. We need to juggle classes, homework, papers, clubs, staying in shape, trying to maintain a somewhat healthy diet, and leave enough time to meet new people, try new things and have fun! It's like a job in itself to try and get everything done on time and still give ourselves enough time to sleep and shower!
Overall life lesson: nothing ever turns out as you expect it to. My first roommate and I got along really well, great actually. But she ended up leaving for a semester and I got a new roommate. We laugh about it now, because we are honestly the most opposite pair of people you could meet in lots of ways on paper. It took a while, actually longer than a while, but we ended up finally talking, laughing, and became friends. We became such good friends that we didn't do anything without one another! People can surprise you.
So that's how freshman year works: it works, and then it might not. Things don't go according to plan, you find yourself lost at some moments, stress sometimes overpowers you to the point of no return, and it's one of the best years of your life because just about every positive memory and experience overshadows all of the bad ones. So, cheers to my freshman year. A year of surprises, discomfort, independence, and memories of all shapes and sizes. I promise, they're mostly good ones.
