Dear Freshman Year,

Thank you for everything. You have by far been the best year of my life. I have never felt as good as I do now, thanks to you.

When I met you, I was nervous. I wasn’t quite sure what you would be like. I had met others like you: middle school freshman year, high school freshman year, and so I thought you might be slightly like those. Yet, I knew deep in my core that you would be different and that both excited and scared me. Like so many others, this was my first real time being away from home. This was also my first time sharing a room with someone I had never met before. I knew I was about to get my first job. I was leaving the friends I had known for years. All of these things had me nervous to meet you.

Once I met you, you embraced me and showed me how warm your love could be. I stepped onto campus for the first time and I was in love. You gave me a roommate who’s light shined brighter than the brightest star, you gave me friends who would never leave me and you gave me the best boss and professors Marist has to offer.

Freshman year, I’ve heard that you didn’t treat others as well as you treated me. Some had bad roommates, no friends, no job, or horrible professors. I want to say that I’m lucky that I got something rare, but I don’t think that that is true. I think that what happened is I gave as much to you as you gave to me. When you gave me my beautiful roommate, I tried my very hardest to be a better person for her; to be neater, quieter, compassionate. When you gave me my amazing friends, I tried to be a better friend, to be a better listener, more open. When you gave me my first boss, I tried to be the best employee ever, to always be on time and always do my work to the best of my ability. When you gave me intelligent professors, I tried my best to take as much from them as humanly possible, to ask questions and study until my eyes fell out.

So, freshman year, when I hear that you weren’t as easy on some, I wonder if it’s because they didn’t give back to you. To all of my high school seniors who are about to end their relationship with high school, and begin a new one, please remember that your relationship with freshman year (no matter, where it is) will not be a simple giving or taking relationship. When freshman year gives you the world, please make sure to return it and you will have an amazing freshman year. Take all that you can from this experience. If you let it, freshman year will change you so much. It has the power to change your life, your views, your attitude but you have to let it embrace you, let it give you everything it thinks you need.

So, again, to the best thing that has ever happened to me -- thank you for giving me so much, for teaching me to be a better person, for showing me my full potential, for embracing me and not letting go even when I thought you weren’t for me.

With all of my love,
Teylor Hamilton.