Someone once told me that one day my priorities in college would change and I wouldn’t even realize it until after they had already changed.
In my opinion there is no better way to describe freshman year than with this on word: whirlwind. Everything is new and exciting. Classes are somewhat important, and let’s be real, odds are you never even go (sorry, Mom and Dad).
Your biggest life crisis is that you can’t decide what to wear to the first football game of the season. Life after college is such a far-off thought to you, and you feel as though you have all the time in the world to plan out the rest of your life.
When you are young, you feel invincible. You feel as though you have all the time in the world to make a decision about who you are as a person, what you want to do for the rest of your life. You feel like you can take on anything and anyone.
Someone asks you where you see yourself in five years and you can’t imagine a life in which college doesn’t exist.
Then, one day, you wake up and it is the start of your junior year, and you realize that you no longer have all the time in the world. Sophomore and freshman years are all a blur at this point.
You start going to class all the time and nearly have a panic attack if you miss even one day - especially if you have been in a class where the professor tells you on the first day that only about 15 out of the 200 people will actually get a job.
Your priorities change drastically. Instead of worrying about date parties and football games, you start worrying about internships. The woes of the real world start to sink in.
You don’t even know when everything changed.
As a junior, someone asks you where you want to be in five years and it makes you want to faint because you realize that now is the time that you have to make that decision.
This all sounds pretty bleak.
But it’s not so bad.
As a freshman, you are supposed to be worried about the trivial things in life. It is OK that your biggest worries are small in the grand scheme of things. And it’s OK that as you get older, your priorities change because they are supposed to.
It’s important that in the midst of all the craziness, we welcome the changes that are to come. It is all a part of growing up.
We should also remember to make the most of the times we have left together, and take advantage of every opportunity that comes our way.
