1. Taking Charge of My Well-Being

Being away from home for the first time, there was no one around to constantly remind me to eat healthily and stay away from sweets and sodas-- at times, I felt the need to binge at times and admittedly I did eat an entire bag of Candy Cane Hershey Kisses (yes, by myself; yes, in the span of 3 days), and needless to say it probably was not the best move, but do I regret it? Only slightly. Aside from that small incident, I think that I've been eating better than I would while at home anyway; with the wide variety of options, it's easy to choose to eat well.

On the exercising side, I found it difficult to find time to go to the gym on a regular basis-- I was no longer swimming competitively and therefore did not go to the pool for two hours every day. However, as an important part of my health in addition to my sleep and diet, it was necessary to incorporate time to exercise. I sat myself down and set a realistic goal to get myself going: three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, after class for one hour. After I integrated time into my schedule, I found that my ability to focus on my work increased, my stress decreased, and I found myself in a much better mood for much of the time. Your health is the foundation to your life, I suppose. Always make time for gains.

2. Time Management Level: 9001

For a college student, when you're not in class, you're doing homework. When you're not going homework, you're eating. When you're not eating, you're sleeping. Every now and then throughout the week, you find time to game and chill with friends, in lieu of losing your mind about your Biology class. On the weekends, you forget about the world and have a little fun, but after Sunday night at 8 pm, you revert back into the shell of the college student you are, frantically finishing the homework you had all weekend to do, while just trying to find yourself in this great, big world.

3. Finding Your Second Family

I'm blessed to have found the friends I have at college. Before coming to Muhlenberg in August, I was worried about not fitting in and having no one around. On the first weekend at college, Orientation Weekend, we were placed into small groups and did many, many ice-breaking activities to get to know each other. And while I did meet some incredibly sweet people, I still didn't have that tight-knit friend group that I hoped for-- I worried about what I would do. After a few weeks of getting acclimated to our new lives, I found myself drawn into a friend group naturally-- and now, we eat meals together as much as we can nearly everyday-- attending each others' sporting events, going out in town on occasional adventures, having movie nights that may last a bit too long (but you don't really mind because you're surrounded by such incredible people), playing video games together online while in your separate dorm rooms, and getting on each others' nerves the best ways we know how (out of love, of course). My friends are one of the things I love most about Muhlenberg.

4. Rooming with a Stranger 101

As an only child, I rarely needed to share anything, much less my room. Hearing countless roommate horror stories, I was very intent on compromising and making it work to avoid experiencing the horror story myself. We lived together in the room-- the room is where we come back to relax and wind down after a stressful day; it would be devastating and irritating to come back to a place where you don't want to be.

Fortunately, my roommate and I live together incredibly well. We spoke over the summer on Facebook about our schedules and our living habits and the way we would like the room to be; my friends have describe our room as "homey" and maybe even "a little too neat." However, I think that this is more than fine-- as long as we're both in agreement and our dorm room is a place where we would be happy to be. We've yet to have any conflicts, but if we were to, I'd imagine communication being a pivotal aspect in the resolution. Good roommates are considerate and sensitive of each other-- we definitely lucked out!

5. 7 Semesters to Go

This first semester felt like one month, when it was really lasted from the end of August to the middle of December-- we're nearly 1/8 of the way through our undergraduate years. While it seems like a long time, it will be over in a flash; therefore, it's important not to lose sight of what's important and to cherish the experiences and people in the present. Here's to the next 7 semesters. May these be the best years of our lives thus far.