When you’re college-bound, everyone talks about certain things you’ll miss. Like the slight bustle of your hometown, which has been you’ve known your whole life. You’ll miss mom’s homemade meals and dad’s storytelling about the good-old days. You’ll miss your dog or cat begging you for food or attention.
You’ll miss the company of your childhood friends and family nearby. They talk about it like that’s how everyone is viewing college, a goodbye to normalcy pledge.
But no one talks about how to feel when you're college-bound.
When people bring up the topic, I stare dumbfounded and in slight denial. I tell them my pending status as an incoming college freshman is like my own personal D-Day. You know it’s coming –you know there’s nothing you can to do stop it. It’s a bulky, metal-coated boat, headed towards the shoreline, where you’ll get off and launch straight into an event with an unknown outcome.
The bottom line is that freshmen year is inevitable –and there’s no stopping it.
Though this is true, you can do something about it. You can embrace whatever feelings you're having. It’s perfectly normal to feel like a ball of nerves that rolls around the room at talk of how to organize your schoolwork. It’s all right to feel like you’re going to burst into a puddle of tears because you're afraid to leave your life behind. It’s common to feel as though your life is being transformed entirely from what it currently is.
It’s okay to not know. Let me say it louder for the people in the back.
It is okay to not know.
College is where we’re going to build towards our future my friends. When you picked your particular college, there was something inside you that said “I need to take this leap and get out of here."
No matter where you’re from or where you’re headed, we are all taking that leap and feeling the same way about it. We are eager, yet fearful of messing up; confident in our studies, but unsure of ourselves. We are going to make mistakes and fall on our faces, but so is everyone else our age. We are graced with this final period of growth between 18 and 24, where most mistakes that are made can be fixed and nothing is truly set in stone.
Take advantage of it.
But there’s something you should know: everyone is starting with nothing. Everyone is raw and open with nothing defining them until they speak. Nothing from the past is going to get you to “fit in” in college. People are interested in hearing about your likes and dislikes, your hobbies and goals; not what you did in high school. It’s almost as if high school never existed. There is no social ranking of who’s popular and who’s not; no one cares, not even the upperclassmen. Other college freshmen are going to be feeling the same way as you. If they tell you otherwise, they’re lying to you as well as to themselves.
It’s good to be scared, because it wouldn’t be normal otherwise. You can also be excited, but there’s something about being afraid that lets you prove to yourself that you will persevere.
It may seem like a millennium, but as we learned from the past four years, time is like lightening –there one second and gone the next.
Everyone starts with nothing, but we all build something.
This is your chance to break that new ground.
Build with confidence and persevere, my friend.