College: A community filled with half-adults. A weird transition period between being a teenager and an adult. A time of new beginnings and friendships. A time of mistakes and discoveries. But most important of all, a time to learn not just academic lessons, but life lessons as well. Having recently finished my first year of college, I have undoubtedly learned many lessons from this wild adventure. This past school year was packed with many joys and disappointments. Some of these lessons took me awhile to understand and some hit me right in my pride-filled gut, knocking the wind out of me. Many lessons that I learned were not easy, meaning that they took some time to understand. So without further ado here are three major lessons I learned my first year as a college freshman.
1. Everyone is on their own path, so don’t compare yourself.
Being used to high school where everyone takes pretty much all the same classes, with a few exceptions here and there, I would low-key compare my grades and GPA like a mad woman. Since our paths were so similar in high school it was quite easy to look to my left or right, competing with my rivals. In college, it is a whole other level. Everyone has a completely different path. No one in college has a schedule even similar to yours. I realized I had to stop comparing when my mentor would scorn me for doing such because it would be the death of me. Everyone has a different story and path and there is no point in comparing because nothing comes out of it. There is no way to accurately compare yourself. Everyone has a different direction and different goals. My job is to make sure I was doing better than myself, not others.
2. "Four Quarters Are Better Than One Hundred Pennies.”
I went to a fairly small high school where everyone knew each others' last name. In high school, I was used to everyone being buddies and we would all hang out in big groups because we had the same classes and same extracurricular activities. Of course in college, all my friends have different classes and even different majors. I would sometimes get frustrated looking around and seeing I didn’t have as many friends as I did in high school. Yet, I learned that it was ok because like the quote says, "four quarters are better than one hundred pennies." I realized that I did have friends, maybe not in large quantities, yet that did not matter because they were quality friends. I could count on one hand the number of really good friends I had made. I reminded myself as well that keeping and maintaining friends in college was much different. Relationships whether platonic or romantic take work. You have to make time to hang out and get to know the other person, showing up to their important events, taking the time to have a lunch or quick smoothie with them or just asking how they are doing. Thus I learned it is better to have four real friends instead of 20 good acquaintances.
3. Nothing goes according to plan.
I am an avid planner and attempt to control my life as much as I can. Before I go to events or even at the start of the week I plan in my mind everything that could wrong and come up with a plan of action for each scenario in my head. This habit stems from a repeated series of bad luck. People occasionally tell me I’m funny yet my close friends know I’m naturally funny because my life is a joke. But of course, absolutely none of the planned scenarios happens. Not even one. I have just learned to avoid having expectations, good or bad. I try, as difficult as it is for me, to just enjoy the present moment and if something does go wrong just go with the flow. At the start of the semester, I foolishly judged my fellow colleagues and thought to myself "look at all these indecisive people changing their majors. That will never be me!” I sheepishly changed my major during the second semester. I realized it's OK. I had discovered a passion I never knew I had. It's perfectly normal for things not to go as planned. I would actually be worried if my life started to go smoothly. More often than not it's actually for the best.
As easy as these lessons sound, they were difficult for me to accept at the moment. Of course, everyone’s experience is different depending on a variety of factors, but that is the beauty of college and the beauty of life. Everyone has the same end goal in college, to find out their purpose in this life. Yet everyone’s journey is different. At the end of the school year, many lessons were learned but I know that life is an entire learning curve and I anxiously anticipate the new school year.
