This is the time when you’ll find yourself.

This is place where you’ll meet your true friends.

This is an experience you’ll always remember.

Parents, teachers, and friends will say a number of things about what college is all about. They all have been there; they all know these things are true.

Among these truths is one that isn’t so enticing; many say that this is the time when we’ll learn to let go.

It’s inevitable that people change in college. Being independent forces us to become new versions of ourselves we may not know even existed. And to make room for the new selves, we have to let go of some of our old selves— the naïve selves, the dependent selves, and the immature selves.

And while we need to let ourselves go in a sense, it’s likely that we’ll need to let others go as well.

I’m approaching two full years out of high school, and I’m just now beginning to understand what my elders meant when they told me all these sappy, greeting-card-suitable adages.

For the majority of these past two years, I’ve held on for dear life to the person I was in high school, and I’ll tell you right now— that person is not someone you’d want to know…

I wasn’t a convict or a psycho or a “Regina George,” no, but I wasn’t any of those things because I was basically no one. I was— and this is really the only way I can think to put it into words— grey.

I was a blank, dull mass willing to take the shape or image of anything anyone wanted me to be. I lost sight of the personality that my mom always bragged about and that my friends used to say was so bright. I threw away who I once was in order to be the person that the, for lack of a better term “popular,” crowd expected.

But remember, I wasn’t the Regina George of my high school. I wasn’t popular or cool. My friends were, and so I was dragged to parties and to lunch tables at which I never felt comfortable.

And yet, at the time, I never realized just how uncomfortable I was about those people; I never realized just how much I didn’t belong. I didn’t understand why I was always so sad about my social life.

By the end of high school, I had been voted “Best Personality,” and so many people—people with whom I was close friends with in the past— wrote in my yearbook about my permanent smile and the fact that there should be more people like me in this world. It was sad.

It wasn’t sad that they wrote these things. It was sad that I found it impossible to believe them. I smiled less frequently, and I no longer thought I was funny or interesting or unique; I had traded that all in for trendy, fake, and spineless.

Fast-forward to this past semester; after transferring, I finally ended up at a university that a good amount of people from my high school attended. I found myself still depending on them, still aching to be a part of the “in-crowd” they had constructed back home, and still being dull, grey, and malleable.

I worked so hard to be the perfect amount of sassy, witty, smart, and up-to-date on things that supposedly mattered (a.k.a. memes and vines). I worked so hard to suppress my spastic, dorky, utterly uncool ways. But no matter how hard I tried, I still never fit in or found common ground with this group. I was never comfortable with myself around them.

I mistook familiarity for the right fit, and in effort to hold onto that insecurity disguised as security, I forfeited time with the new, genuine people I had met at school so far; I passed up getting to know the people who liked the spastic, dorky, utterly uncool parts of me in order to stay the person that made me so unhappy in high school.

And let me tell you, there is nothing more exhausting than being someone you’re not.

Very recently I finally saw that this was going on. A simple phone call to my mom, in which I sobbed to her about the prospect of going to a party made up solely from these hometown kids, opened my eyes to the injustice I was committing against myself.

It was as though I had tried to bury my former self, and after all these years, she had broken through the surface, ready to fight back.

As my mom told me on the phone, “If you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.” It was time for me to stop taking on this persona and start being myself. This relationship I had with these people with whom I didn’t belong was toxic, and it was time to stop fooling myself into thinking it was perfectly healthy.

And having realized this, I’m getting a second chance at getting to know the people who saw the real me this whole time. For the first time in a while, I’m seeing that I do have unique interests, quirks, and opinions.

Finally I see that who I am isn’t wrong or not good enough. It was just wrong for certain people.

And finally, I’m happy again.

That’s not to say that I hate everyone from home; I have a few close friends here that came from home, but I’m still not really sure if they’ll like the real me, or if they just like the person I pretended to be for their sake. Only time will tell, and I’m not opposed to keeping them in my life if they do appreciate the real me.

But for now, I’m able to open myself up to new, genuine friendships with truly kind, loving, and beautiful people who don’t care what I’m wearing or how my hair and makeup look. For now, I’m starting to really understand why people say what they do about college. I may not yet be seasoned in the art of letting go, but I’m learning about how important it sometimes is.

Because of this experience, years from now when those on the verge of going to college ask me what it’s all about, I’ll tell them that it’s the time when they’ll find themselves.

I’ll tell them it’s the place where they’ll meet their true friends.

I’ll tell them it’s an experience they’ll always remember.

And I’ll tell them it’s the time when they’ll learn to let go.