Somehow, some way, my first year of college is coming to a close. I can still see myself during O-Week, a young, bright-eyed thing—sitting on the soft grass with people who I couldn’t tell would or would not be my friends for my college career, being jostled by screeching crowds at my first frat party, stumbling blearily at 9 AM to “college life” introductory sessions I can’t even remember. Though it’s probably only the nostalgia talking, I miss the innocence and boundless optimism at the time.

I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with my life, as I still don’t now, but I was okay with it. I was excited to shed my nerdy high school persona and act bold and confident and experienced. Coming from an all-girls school, I was dazzled by the population of boys all around me, unable to let myself confront how they might hurt me. I did things I said I would never do, and in the process realized it was futile to keep saying “never.”

Academics didn’t play as much of a role as I initially envisioned (I once wanted to become an academic, earning a PhD in English), but I still seemed to always be in the midst of writing an essay. I immersed myself in Greek Thought and Literature, engaging with Thucydides and Herodotus and Sophocles in ways I never thought I could. In "Self, Culture, and Society," I discussed some of the greatest minds of the past 150 years—Marx, Freud, Benjamin, de Beauvoir, Butler. I’m almost finished reading Ulysses.

Honestly, what I’ll remember most about this year are my long walks alone, wandering around bookstores, mulling over my new college self. I’m almost twenty, and my identity is constantly in flux. College has only made it more difficult to reconcile my old, seemingly immutable self—efficient, scholastic, intense—with the me my peers now know—relaxed, adventurous, ditzy. And that’s okay. That’s how it’s supposed to be. I was talking with my mother on the phone once, and she said something that stayed with me: “You won’t think like a nineteen-year-old girl forever.” I will embrace this confusion, this internal chaos. It will be of use to me one day.

This year wasn’t perfect, to the disappointment of my senior year self eagerly crafting her UChicago application. But I’m glad it wasn’t perfect. I learned more about myself this year than I have in the rest of my life, I read life-changing books, and met people I truly love. The hard times were harder, in some ways, than they’ve ever been before, but here I am. I’ve survived.