It’s cliche to say, but it feels like it was just yesterday that I was sitting in Ms. Walker’s first grade class and drawing pictures of my entire family or the mansion-boat (I was unimpressed with houseboats as a child) that I would inevitably have when I was older. And now I’m going to college. I'm absolutely terrified. But I'm also so incredibly excited. Older friends have told me that the latter will pass quickly and the former will not.

It's just that I don't know if I've made all of the right decisions. Are the majors that I've picked the right ones to focus on? How should I know at this point what I want to do for the rest of my life? Have I picked the right classes so that I do not make myself suffer unnecessarily this first semester of my freshman year? Did I pick the right college? For all that I have started to love UC Berkeley and its surroundings, I really don't know how it is that I will fit on campus and how to leave my mark. I want to do something noteworthy but attending a school with so many different people doing such amazing things makes it hard to take note. It's hard to feel anything but ordinary when the extraordinary is done by others around you.

I almost feel like it would be better if I could just stay. Little. Even though I know very well that becoming 18 does not mean that I'm an adult. It feels like maybe things would be simpler and happier, living in the age of coloring books and Hannah Montana and playing Pokemon Diamond on a Nintendo DS Lite. When the only things I had to worry about were whether my friends would be in town over the summer or if my teacher would keep us in past the bell because I wouldn't be able to get to class on time (hooray for tardy detentions.) And this feeling is incredibly strange because since I was 6 I've been waiting for the time that I could grow up and be an adult, from dressing up in my mom's clothes to repeatedly asking my cousin what college was like. And much like the words of Alessia Cara, I thought that the people who were telling me that being a kid is much better weren't being truthful.

But in the end, I welcome the challenge. I look forward to having new experiences and generally having a blast along with completing my studies. And I'll do my best to walk on the line between being a kid and hardcore adulting. In the end, I never want to really grow up.