College is quite a journey. It involves taking lots of credits, attending lots of parties (hopefully), meeting lots of people, involving yourself in lots of extracurricular activities and spending long hours working on assignments until you are almost brain-dead. College is amazing and an experience that involves self-awareness, self-confidence and self-realization. Within just a few years, you are forced out of your comfort zone and required to learn your strengths and weaknesses in order to thrive. Your heart will be broken by those who don't share the same needs or values as you, you will lose friends that you thought were your world your freshman year and you will look back and realize that you are not the same shy, scared nineteen year old that entered into the doors of your dorm room.
You are now experienced and intelligent and you know what you want and need. In order to realize who you are, you have gone through a lot. You have spent hours trying to make up with your friend or your ex-boyfriend. You have joined a sorority or a fraternity or a club or an organization. You've been able to express yourself to your full extent and let yourself shine and if someone else doesn't agree with you then so be it. It's through these negative and positive experiences that you've been able to grow as a person and realize who you truly are and how you deal with adversity and hardships. Not every day can be perfect or amazing because if that were the case you would be sheltered and unrealistic.
Looking back to freshman year, you realize that you are happy with where you are now, even if it meant getting hurt in the process or losing a few people that probably weren't meant to be in your life anyways. Back then you thought it was the end of the world or that you would never survive or move on, but that's exactly what life does: it moves on and so do you. You change and develop according to what life throws at you and you decide to flourish or disintegrate. Most of the time, you will flourish and you will realize your full potential.
As the years go by in college and your early twenties, you will be able to realize what is important and how you can apply your skills to these tasks and priorities. You will prioritize school and work and bettering yourself through learning opportunities and hard work and discipline. You will focus on things that matter like your major, your professional field and simply just taking time out to contemplate who you are and how you have gotten so far.
You will grow and you will learn and you will become the best version of yourself and once you cross the graduation stage in a year's time, you will know that you can take on anything and everything. You know that you will be okay and that life will go on. You are now fully yourself and there is nothing else you would rather be.
