So that time of year has rolled around once more—the beginning of yet another school year. And with that comes not only fresh notebooks and new schedules, but also the inevitable, “all-knowing” advice from those who preceded you. Take this open letter for example. Here I am, a college sophomore, about to tell you incoming freshmen how exactly everything’s going to go. Well, truth be told, I can’t actually do that. I can’t promise you that things will go this way or that. I can’t assure you that packing this thing over that one will be the key to your success. I can’t even give you a cure-all for such sticky situations as how to make new friends or how to deal with college stresses. I can only speak from my experience. I can only tell you what did—and more importantly what didn’t—work for me. Because everyone’s going to have a slightly different experience, and having only one year of college over your current level of experience doesn’t exactly make me what you’d call an expert.
So with that out of the way, I come to my central point: If I can’t tell you how to solve your #FreshmenProbs, then I won’t. I won’t pretend to know. I won’t even pretend that it would be ideal if I were to know. You’re going to have to learn this stuff for yourself. And it’s best this way. Yes, a heaping ton of people have gone through the same thing, myself included. And you can read all of the articles and open letters and hear secondhand stories and lessons learned until your absolutely sick of our thinly veiled efforts at bragging about superior experience. You can do all that, and you’ll feel moderately more prepared. But you still won’t be. Not entirely at least.
You’ll arrive on your first day. You’ll more than likely have enough nerves to go around. You could very well find yourself crying once your family’s hit the road. And you’ll probably find some discomfort in the fact that you hardly know a soul across the entire campus. For me, personally, a huge stressor was the fact that I was going to have to figure out how to navigate New York City on my own for the first time (Subways? Buses? Taxis? I felt truly trapped). But the thing about all those problems, is that you figure them out. Google Maps turned out to be the best navigator I could ask for (who knew?). You figure a way around or through these problems, not because it’s easy, but because you’re on your own and it’s what’s necessary.
Now, I don’t mean to place the burdensome load of responsibility that lies within the words “you have to” on your shoulders. Because that’s not what it is. You don’t have to. You don’t have to go to college. You don’t have to solve all the problems that pop up along the way. But if it matters to you, then you will. If you want it, you’ll find a way to achieve it. If it ultimately doesn’t turn out to be the path for you, then that’s no failure, but a recognition of who you are, what your needs are, and what will serve you best in terms of success in the long run. But if it really is for you, if making it through college is really what you want, then you’ll find overcoming these problems to be a necessity.
Again, you’ve assigned yourself this goal. You’ve assigned yourself this responsibility. You’ve assigned yourself the inevitable problems that will pop up along the way. But you will figure them out. And you’ll grow. You’ll find that classes aren’t the only opportunities for learning and that overcoming a crippling fear may actually result in the biggest lesson you learn all year. And I couldn’t even begin to teach such lessons in a mere article. Not only would it be impossible for me to predict the exact problems that you will end up facing (largely due to varying viewpoints of what constitutes a problem, as well as the vastly different circumstances of the individual), but it would also be impossible for me to give you a simple one-size-fits-all answer for any such problem. Oftentimes, like the problem, the answer is suited to the person facing such a setback. The answer will tell you something about yourself. It will alter who you are and where you’re heading, and for this reason, it’s essential that you figure it out for yourself.
The problems I encountered freshmen year? The specifics aren’t important, only that I dealt with them. Regardless of what they were, I dealt with them, without the simplicity, as well as the disguised disservice, of spoonfed answers. And if I can do it, I’m willing to bet that you can too.