A year from this week, was the first week of acceptance and rejection letters that just kept coming through the mail. For most, this time of senior year is one of the most stressful because you don’t know where you’re going to end up in less than six months.

For me, I was a junior in high school only hoping that my dream of not being high school next year would come true. I had applied to around ten different schools only wishing that one of them would take a chance on a sixteen-year old that was planning on attending college a year early. I remember I’d make my mom check the mail every other day to see if I had received a big envelope. Every week I would struggle because I didn’t know what my future would hold.

Would I be walking the halls of the same high school I’d been going to for three years, would I be at my community college taking classes or would I be at a four-year university somewhere in the world taking classes and learning to be an adult. All I had dreamed of was attending a four-year university where I’d be able to broaden my horizons of learning and of the world itself. Week after week acceptance letters had started coming in. As much as I wanted to go to a big southern university, I had to constantly remind myself that I was young and from California.

I had looked into all the big schools in South Carolina, like Clemson and USC, but I just didn’t know if I wanted to be at a school with over 55,000 people and just be overwhelmingly lost. I had toured some other smaller colleges in South Carolina, like Coastal and C of C, and decided that a smaller school where I could stand out would be more beneficial to my education and to my well-being.

Finally, one morning at 5 AM, knowing that College of Charleston was one of my top schools, my parents ran into my room with a big envelope in hand and said, “YOU GOT IN! YOU GOT IN!” And it was just that. I had received my acceptance letter to one of my favorite schools I wanted. I remember after that I took the longest and deepest breath. I was relieved in every way possible, I knew that my future was about to hold one of the greatest endeavors that I have ever been on.

After that, life was just a blur. I started getting recognized at my school for being 17 and about to attend a four-year university. I started to plan out what my dorm was going to look like and who my roommate was going to be. I started going through each and every sorority trying to wrap my head around which one I would fit in with. I was nervous, excited, and all I wanted was to skip the next month’s till I was officially in Charleston attending one of the most beautiful schools I’d ever laid my eyes on.

Summer passed quickly and the next thing I knew I was saying goodbye to all the people I had grown up with for 17 years. I was saying goodbye to my best friends, my life and my home. When I arrived in Charleston, I wasn’t nervous. I was beyond excited. My roommate and I had decided what we wanted our dorm to look like and we were ready. We both decided to rush sororities, so we moved in early and got to meet tons of people through that.

That first week I was here for rush was some of the hardest. I was in between trying to get all these different types of girls to like me, hoping to get picked back to the one I loved, and trying to make new friends, all while saying goodbye to my family and being completely and utterly alone. When my parents left, that’s when it hit me. I’m really doing this. I’m seventeen years old and I graduated a year early to move across the whole country. I’m an adult now. I remember it was crazy to wrap my head around, but here I am and I’m doing just fine.

After joining a group of girls that I can for sure call my best friends, everything was a blur. I had classes, sorority stuff, meeting new people, finding my way, and living my life. The first two weeks were crazy for me. I had never been a big partier in high school, but college was a whole other level.

I met two of my best friends (Emily and Mattie), through my sorority on the first week of school and I realized that I would keep these two people in my life forever. The first two months of school were pretty much spent with them. Mattie who is a sophomore here at the College, pretty much taught Emily and I how to survive. Mattie and her roommates, whom I wish I could thank every day of my life, showed us how to have a good ole time here.

Throughout my first semester, I was trying to balance social life and academics. When you go to college you are handed all this freedom right away and I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty hard to balance. As the months passed I had met my two other best friends, Igor and Grace. I had started steadily hanging out and began to start liking Igor, which eventually lead to us having a relationship. With this, I had added another thing to my life. Social, academic and now my love life was all flourishing.

As the first semester came to an end, I had struggled hard with school and it affected my well-being because I had continued to upset myself over grades. I had never done so poorly in school before, so it was a shock to see that my freshmen year of college I had done really bad. This hit me pretty hard because I was such an overachiever that when I didn’t do well, I felt defeated.

Although, while telling friends about the way things had gone with academics this semester, they reassured me that I was young and that I was coming to a new place. College isn’t easy and having all these new things to do and people to meet is distracting. Though, college isn’t meant to be easy, that’s why we’ve spent so many years trying to prepare ourselves for this future. College is difficult, but it’s one hell of a good time.

As I sit here writing this and thinking about all that has happened in this last year, I become speechless because it feels like just yesterday I was worried about whether or not I was going to get in to college. Time moves fast and life is crazy. And with that, all I have to say is live the life worth living for and have a good time doing it.