Dear Freshman Me,

Your freshman year will be hard, and to be honest, it doesn’t get much easier for a while. You will struggle with finding yourself, finding your friends, and finding your place on the campus you will grow to call home. You will want to go home every minute you find yourself having free time because you miss your bed, your family, and especially your dog. You will shy away from so many people on your floor and in your classes because they seem so much cooler and well adjusted than you. But what you don’t realize is that this place that seems like a special version of Hell will end up being your favorite place on this planet, and that these people who you thought you’d never understand would end up being the people you cherish the most.

As you enter the last six weeks of your time as an undergrad, you will wish you had given yourself some more room to breathe. This is hard for everyone, not just you. You have to realize that your freshman year is the time to make things awkward – go sit with people you hardly know at lunch, ask that girl down the hall if she wants pizza (because chances are, she does). Put yourself out there, be vulnerable. People appreciate it. When you get to your senior year, and you are still making friends, you’ll kick yourself for not fostering these relationships earlier.

Slow down for a minute. Your freshman year is one of the lightest years you will have; you won’t be overly involved in anything yet and other than classes, you’ll be pretty free. Don’t use that time to go home, or sit in your room wishing you could go back to your friends from high school. Use that time to do random things with your hall-mates or that person from your intro sociology class. Some of the best memories you will take with you are the ones where you and your friends are delusional from staying up too late and start doing acrobatics in the halls or when you go to get donuts at 3AM on a Tuesday night. If someone asks you to go do something, go. The more random, the better - you will treasure these moments later.

Stop worrying so much. Everything will get done – it always does. Enjoy yourself.

In general terms, allow yourself to fall in love. As you approach graduation, you won’t quite know what to do with yourself; you won’t believe that there will ever be another place that will touch your heart like your campus, you doubt you’ll ever find friends as true and genuine as you have here, and you will be on the verge of tears every time you think about leaving. Allow yourself to fall in love with this campus, because four years won’t be enough with it. Allow yourself to fall in love with its students and faculty and staff because they’ll only be a five-minute walk away for a short time, and FaceTime really just doesn’t cut it sometimes. Love it now, because when you have to leave, you’ll wish you would’ve loved it sooner.

Your Senior Self