Dear Freshman-year-move-in-day self,
Today is a day filled with a roller coaster of emotions. Excitement, nerves, fears, curiosity, adventure, and so much more pulsing through your head, and rightfully so. Today’s the day you fly the coop, in a matter of hours you’ll watch your family drive away, with a tear in your eye, knowing you won’t be seeing them for what is probably close to a month from now. You realize that your comfort zone is quickly is becoming further and further away and you’ll be left standing in this strange, unfamiliar place that’s supposed to become your "home away from home" for the next four years.
But I’m here to tell you this scary, new, crazy adventure will all turn out alright. You’ll meet the "friends you’ll have for the rest of your life" you’ve always heard about. You’ll experience and conquer challenges you never saw coming. You’ll get through those days when you have two exams and are only running on three hours of sleep. Your roommates won’t turn out to be some crazy partiers, or some dorm-bound introverts. You will find yourself missing home at times but your new best friends will help you to quickly get over that. You will survive off the dining hall food and find out where the best places to eat on campus are. Unfortunately you will have to take that boring Anthropology class, but you will pass and you may be forced to take Psych with the hardest professor on campus, but I promise you, much to your disbelief, you will make it through and pass.
So now, looking back almost halfway done with our undergrad career I want to tell you it’s all going to be OK. We’ll continue to experience up and downs, until we begin our next adventure. But before you know it, in the blink of an eye we’ll be done and all those fears and worries seem like miles away and you realize that your time spent at your new found "home" is flying by much too quickly. The place that was once one of fear and unknown has turned into one that you’ve come to love, filled with friends and memories you will find yourself unable to forget. So as much as today is a day full of nerves and excitement, just remember you’re all new, filled with worries, and anxious for what is to come, so all I have to tell you is, it’s all going to work out just fine.
Love,
Second-semester-Sophomore self