Everybody has a different experience during their freshman year of college. It can either be the best year of their lives, the worst year they've ever experienced, or just in between. The only thing that everybody can agree on is that our freshman year of college is one we will never forget whether it is good or bad. As the semester is coming to a close, all of us are reflecting on everything that has happened this year. Now that exams are rolling around in no time, I have begun reflecting back on my very first year of college.
Move in day honestly feels like it happened five years ago instead of around nine months because of everything that has happened and everything I have learned. When I first arrived on campus, not only was I scared to death, but I felt extremely lonely as well. I wasn't sure if I would be able to make friends as easily as everybody else because I had struggled with this my entire life. Thankfully, though, I had a friend from my childhood that was starting her freshman year as well.
Together, we began to figure out what college life is all about. We learned that our dining hall will probably give us food poisoning, which was a quick discovery. We learned how to spend our money wisely as we began to go broke just after a few short weeks, something I'm sure almost every college student would understand. And finally, we learned that sometimes, things just do not go as planned.
Classes were the most difficult thing to figure out. In high school, I did fairly well academically, and when I came to college I learned that everything was much different. The workload overwhelmed me to the point that I felt as if I could not do any of it and that I was doing it all completely wrong. My style of writing was also apparently completely wrong, which came as a shock to me since I had always gotten A's on papers in high school. But with a little help from professors, I eventually got the hang of it.
The most important thing I learned from my freshman year was that no matter how hard things got, I could never give up. During the first week of school, I hated college so much that I was already planning on transferring out at the end of the semester. After giving it another chance and coming back for my second semester, I learned that it wasn't as bad as I had thought and it just took me a little longer to adjust.
Now that the year is almost over, I feel as if I have not only made memories that will last a lifetime, but I know that I will be making even more as the years go on. I also feel super old now that I'm almost a sophomore in college, but I can't even begin to imagine how my parents must feel. Anyways, my freshman year was not the best, but it wasn't terrible either. All I can hope is that the next four years will only get better and better as time goes on.
