For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to go to UNC-Chapel Hill. It wasn't really something that my family approved of, because I grew up in a family of NC State fans. (They still question where they went wrong in raising me.) But I was stubborn, and I knew what I wanted. I was so thrilled when I got accepted that I cried so hard my brother thought I had been denied. And then I spent the entire spring and summer of that year terrified out of my mind to leave for college. I dreaded how hard it was going to be. I wondered if I would have any friends. What if I missed my parents and brother so much that I had to drop out and come back home to go to the community college nearby? My last night at home, I clung to my best friends and cried because I was so afraid of what was coming next. The day my parents moved me in, I made them stay there all day. When I finally had to let them leave, I cried like I was never going to see them again. I was scared, really scared, for what was going to happen once they were gone.

But my fear of going to college was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was afraid of getting bad grades, so I worked hard and studied like crazy. I was afraid that I would have no friends, so I put myself out there, and I made an effort to be a friendly face to all the people I had met. I was afraid of gaining the freshman 15, so I dragged my sorry ass to the gym before class. You get the point. And the things is, it worked.

Long story short, you can do anything if you set your mind to it. No one ever said things were going to be easy, that's for sure. It's definitely going to be a lot of work. Study your ass off (college is hard). Put yourself way outside of your comfort zone. Try something new. Go out enough to have a great time without ruining your college career. And most of all, resist the temptation to be lazy, unless it's a Sunday. It's always okay to be lazy on Sundays. You only have four years of college, and you won't want to look back and wonder why you wasted it doing nothing. The best thing that you can do in life, including your first semester of college, is to give it your all and know that it will pay off. Honestly, I'm gonna have to revert back to my middle school days and quote my good friend Hannah Montana here: "Life's what you make it, so let's make it rock."