When you’re about to head off to college it seems that everyone around you has some advice or something to say about the experience. You hear these things over and over again but it is not until you are actually living out the experience that you really realize how true they are. Here are some things we are told about college that end up being even more true than we thought they would be.

1. Time flies.

Literally flies by. When you hear this you think it will probably feel kind of fast but in reality it'll be time to graduate before you're even done moving into your freshman dorm. I still can’t believe I'm graduating this year. It feels like just yesterday that I was a nervous freshman trying to figure out how college worked. Make it count!

2. You’re going to become so much more independent.

This is so true. I thought to myself, well obviously I’m going to become more independent because my parents won’t be around. But I did not realize the extent to which I would feel like an actual adult. Thanks to grocery shopping and laundry, I have become more confident in myself and my own abilities to take care of myself than I would have ever thought possible.

3. Getting involved on campus will do you wonders.

Ha, I thought, well I was never really involved in high school and had plenty of friends so this will probably be the same. I was wrong. It’s embarrassing but I literally probably had like three friends my first semester. Then I joined a sorority and got an on campus job and those saved my life socially.

4. After your first semester you’ll stop wanting to go home every weekend.

I imagined there would be a time where my desire to go home would be significantly less but I definitely thought I would still make my way down south to my comfortable home with my parents pretty often. I was wrong again, however, as time went on and I got more involved on campus and by my Sophomore year I never went home on the weekends.

5. You’ll learn to sleep through anything.

I was such a light sleeper when I first went to college. I would yell at my brother for having the TV on in his room with the door closed at night because it bothered me. People told me college would change that but I didn’t believe them. After two months of living in the dorms and being a college student I was sleeping through loud music and singing, drunk people in the parking lot outside my window, and would pass out with the lights on because I was so exhausted.

6. Headphones will become your new best friend.

Before college I actually hated headphones. They gave me a headache and I didn’t like to have the sounds of the world shut out. As my college career is coming to an end this year, I will admit that I owe my survival and success to my headphones. They’ve been there for me through so much, such as blocking out distracting sounds around me while trying to study, watching TV while my roommate was trying to sleep, and making the walk across campus go by that much faster.

7. You’ll become addicted to online shopping.

I can honestly say that before going to college I never bought clothes online. Ever. By the end of my first semester I had broken that streak at least 10 times. It’s just so easy to sit there in your dorm room at night browsing around online and ordering stuff. You tell yourself it’s necessary because you’re not familiar with the stores in the area and it’s just the perfect study break. Also, you become obsessed with receiving mail and packages because it’s just so much more exciting at college than at home for some reason