This year was one hell of a ride. I came to a new state nine hours away from my hometown, a new city with new places to discover, with new people from all over the world and ended up making friends who make me feel like I'm at home. I'm realizing that one of the most challenging things about this year was not the abundance of exams or the midterms or the 20-page papers that I had due. It was the practice of living in the moment. I call it a practice because it is something our society constantly struggles with, and it is a skill that sounds impossible to master.
I find myself saying "I can't wait to..." a lot, as I am a college student who hopes to have a stable, bright future. I say things like, "I can't wait to get married and have a huge family with two dogs and a stable career." Why are we always so focused on what's next? Is our society turning us into relentless, fast-paced thinkers who are always half-invested in the current moment that we're in so much so that we can't (forgive me for this but) stop to smell the roses?
Maybe, we should enjoy the little moments that might be annoying to us right now, because ten years from now, I bet we're all going to be wishing that we could go back to our freshman year of college, even if you didn't have the best roommate, or you spent every night pulling all-nighters, because you didn't know how hard taking 18-credits was going to be. If you're a college student, you are extremely privileged and lucky, and this experience is something that should be cherished. Enjoy that you live in the dorms (even tho DPS can be a drag). Enjoy that you have access to the dining halls and that dishes aren't something to worry about, because next year (most likely), you'll be living off-campus and you'll have to adjust to real life adult chores. You also don't have to drive every week for grocery-shopping purposes, which is another perk of dining halls!
Next year, you won't be a freshman anymore, so you'll be expected to know the ropes of college. You're kind of not allowed to make dumb mistakes like getting lost on the way to class anymore. Your professors won't be as lenient, because after all, you are a sophomore. You can't be undecided, because you're not a freshman anymore. You have to really know what you're doing, because your major probably requires that you know what you're doing if you want to graduate in four years. Also, you're going to want to land those internships this summer at potential companies you'll be working at post-graduation, because you're not a freshman anymore.
In the beginning of the year, I hated being a freshman. It's not always the easiest transition to go from ruling the school as an autonomous senior to going back to being a tiny freshman who gets lost on the way to class. But now that this year is coming to an end, you realize that it wasn't all that bad. You might even miss being the young, naive freshman who seemed to have their whole lives ahead of them.
