Fetus, bottom of the food chain, new kid on the block, fresh meat – Freshman.
When I flashback to the first day of my freshman year of high school, I remember having a sense of arrogant pride atop my tiny little head because I was now a graduate of the middle school. Because I was a newfound graduate of the middle school, I thought that the Freshman Academy was going to be a straight breeze accompanied with teachers who loved me and stellar grades that truly outdid even my own standards.
As my dad dropped me off at 7:25 a.m. in our 1995 squeaky minivan and rolled down the window yelling obnoxiously in hot pursuit of embarrassment “Bye honey!!! Have a great day!!”, I rolled my eyes. I was obvi way too cool for dads and minivans – especially dads IN minivans. I tossed my hair over my shoulder, smelled the sweet, high school musty scent, and said “piece of cake”.
As I traveled through the halls of the Freshman Academy, smelling the scent of a mix between Victoria Secret Perfume and B.O., it reality hit me. Reality literally hit me in the form of backpacks left and right as freshman nervously ran to their first classes.
That day, along with the rest of freshman year, I was reminded daily of the learning experience I was journeying upon. This year was the first of the next four years of my life. What I didn’t know was that - although I was a baby of the high school dynasty, was absolutely clueless in regards to everything, and got lost mentally and physically 100% of the time – I was embarking upon a journey that would help define and shape me within the next four years.
When I left my dorm room on the first day of freshman year ten weeks ago, I felt overwhelmingly confident. I was equipped with my twenty-seven binders, numba 2 pencils, and T-84 calculator set out to take advantage of this second chance to relive a “Freshman Year”.
As I began the thirty minute commute from my dorm room located literally in the boonies to my first ever 9:30 class, I experienced an overwhelming flashback of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome to high school freshman. Fear struck me as I walked across campus while observing in awe the amount of “big kids” that crossed my path, cringing as I almost got hit by 13249 bikers, and looking up at the towering buildings in which my classes were located.
The mindset I left with that morning was that my college freshman year was going to be nothing like my high school freshman year. I told myself that I was older, wiser, had more figured out, and wasn’t as lame. I convinced myself that I had grown up within the previous four years and there was essentially nothing else for me to learn. But slowly, as the semester began to unfold, this perspective of mine was humbled real quick.
What I quickly learned was that – just like my high school freshman year – I was bottom of the totem pole. Through experiences such as getting lost, getting six parking tickets, receiving my first ever F on a test, losing my keys and finding them hours later on top of my car, almost hitting three bikers with my car, and many, many other things that awakened this new outlook that said “Gracie, you’re never going to have your crap together and that is O. K.”
I still behave like an immature 12 year old boy, I am still lame as heck, I still wear items that my friends deem as “wtfluff are you wearing,” I still go day to day flippantly wondering what my schedule consists of next, and I still am that dorky freshman I was in high school who did not know what she was doing with her life everrrr. Although I have painfully and humbly accepted the fact that although I learned a lot in my four years of high school post my freshman year, I still have lots of life ahead of me. And I love it.
