As my freshman year of college comes to close, I realize that I naïvely considered myself an expert on this subject. I mean, how hard can it be to be intentional with people you live with, right? But it turns out I was wrong; it’s not easy. People hurt us, and people surprise us. But these years are fleeting, and it is important to remember that this is a learning season for everyone. Relationships in college are difficult, but somehow I’m managing to survive them, and you can too.
Everything about your first year of college is a strange new world. People are figuring out who they are and who they want to be, and along the way things get messy. The first few weeks are both exhilarating and terrifying. You wander throughout the dining commons praying that you know at least one other person to sit with, and you unconsciously assimilate yourself to other peoples personalities to feel like you belong. For a while, this can be fun. You can be anyone you want to be, and you can forget all the embarrassing mistakes you made in high school and pretend like they never happened. But this only lasts for so long.
Eventually within the first semester, you will start to form a friend group. These friendships make you feel like you’ve found your place in college. But then second semester rolls around, and things change.
Your friend group, which you once thought would last all four years of college and even to old age, falls apart. This time will be full of complexities and a lot of awkward conversations, but this time is necessary. For some of you, however, you may find yourself stuck in a certain group. You may be thinking to yourself, “Let me out of here!” but find that too afraid to leave or to cause any harm. But here’s a tip: you're not actually stuck. You can reach out to your RA, family, and even upperclassmen, because they too, have been through this and are willing to help.
After rules of Girl Code have been broken and a few tears have been shed, you start to realize that this whole time you’ve been surrounded by people going through the same thing. Original, first-week judgements that were made turn out to be wrong. The girl down the hall, who you thought hated you (just because she has an RBF), turns out to be genuine, compassionate, and always willing to have 2am conversations with you if you’re feeling down. And the “enemy” friend group that was seen as the adversaries to your own, turns out to be full of gems you don’t know why you were made to dislike in the first place.
It is in these moments that the sea of people flooding the lunch rush hold endless opportunities and countless friends willing to take you in and invite you into a place where you belong, a place where they support your decision to go to the beach instead of class, and a place where love endures even when it is "that time of the month." A place of obnoxious laughter, spontaneous karaoke sessions, and a place where you can finally feel like yourself in college.
So stay strong, young one. The best is yet to come.
