Freshman year of college is a weird time.

You graduate high school, have one last summer with the only friends you've ever know, pack up all of your belongings and move to a place that is completely foreign to you. You go from the town you have called home for the past eighteen years of your life, to a place where familiar faces are far and few between. It can be scary, but this new place is where you will be spending the majority of your year for the next four years. This place is on its way to becoming your home.

Throughout the next eight months, life is going to be a rollercoaster. There are going to be good days and bad days. Days where you love college, and days where all you want to do is curl up in your own bed and get a hug from your mom. Either way, you are growing up and moving in a new direction, and your life is not stopping for anyone. Your world is changing, and whether you see it or not, so are you.

The first few weeks are the hardest, or at least they were in my case. Saying goodbye to and being more than ten minutes from everyone and everything I had ever known was awful. I was extremely homesick, and found myself feeling like I had made the wrong decision by leaving home and going to college. However, things got better day by day, and soon enough I found myself being able to invest more of me into the place that I was rather than where I used to be. Being away from the amazing foundation I had built at home was hard, but discovering more of who I was and getting to experience living on my own for the first time made it worth it.

Freshman year has been filled with settling in. Settling into living by myself, settling into making new friends, settling into a new job, settling into a new city and settling into a new lifestyle. My first year of college has been spent figuring out who exactly I want to be, and how I want to get there.

Over the past eight months, I have gone from a girl who questioned whether or not she would ever find her place in college, to a girl who has found home in two different places. My life has been filled with so many amazing people and experiences this year, and I truly could not have asked for a better freshman year. God placed me exactly where I needed to be, and for that I am so grateful.

All this being said however, as I'm writing this, it is April 14, and I have a little over a week left of living on this campus until I move home for the summer. One more week of living on my own before I move back into my parent's house for four months. One more week before old habits and old times don't seem so far away. At the beginning of the year, I was counting down the days until this moment came, but now it all seems so bittersweet.

So now, as I sit on my floor typing this article amidst my bags that are slowly being packed to move for the third time this year, I am wondering how it is possible to have my life split into two pieces, and how I am going to be away from half of it for four months. I am excited to see the people I love from home and to have the summer with them, but to be honest, I'm a little nervous. Freshman year has been a time for growth and for moving forward, and in a way, moving home feels like a step back even if it is just for the summer. I am not the same girl that I was eight months ago, and walking in the shadows of her footsteps again feels like it should be a dream, not a quickly approaching reality.

However, although I have uncertainties about what this new stage of my life is going to bring, I am taking it one day at a time. If this year has taught me anything, it's the importance of accepting each day for what it is, and for living each moment to the best of your ability.

Freshman year, you've been good to me.

Here's to the next stage.