I don’t believe that the phrase, “the first week of college will be one of the easiest seven days of your life,” has ever been uttered ever. However, one phrase that probably has been spoken more than a few times is, “the first week of college will be one of the hardest seven days of your life.” The reasoning behind this is because, well, the latter of the two statements is pretty accurate for most people. I personally moved into college as a freshman just last week and I would honestly say that this experience has been one of a kind.

Now, let me ask you some questions. In what other situation in life do you live in a 14 by 12 square foot room with three other men? In what other scenario are there 10 women showering directly next to each other in a tight central bathroom? Where else are there activities going on that are exclusive to your own gated community? Honestly, the only type of place just like this that comes to mind is, well, prison. Now I am in no way, shape, or form attempting to compare a college campus to prison because that is just not accurate. What I am saying, however, is that a place like this is so rare and adapting to an environment like this is quite a shock. In addition to the new home lifestyle, college students are now allowed to make any other lifestyle decisions that they want. These decisions include but are not limited to, choosing what you want to eat, choosing how late you stay up, choosing what parties to attend and choosing if you want to party at all. Again, this huge gain of freedom that we have now obtained can be rather exciting yet confusing at the same time.

On top of these monumental lifestyle changes, college freshmen are also leaving their high school friends behind and naturally are forced to make new friends. The interesting thing about college is that there could be people that are originally from your back yard that go to school with you as well as people who go to school with you that are from the opposite side of the globe. Meeting new people is never easy, but most orientation staff help you to meet as many people as possible is the simplest of ways. Sometimes, however, you meet too many people. The hardest part about my transition I believe was remembering people’s names. These name hardships stretch anywhere from calling someone named Kyle the name Ryan to asking someone where they are from even though they told you they were from your hometown an hour ago to trying to figure out the names of identical twins (that’s always the hardest).

Now these are just some of the minor hardships about the beginnings of college. Things become more complex when it comes down to academics, going to office hours, and managing your time between that economics project and Madden 17 properly. However, those are all issues for another time. For now, I’d just like to leave you with the notion that the first week of college is in fact not easy at all. There are still a lot of things that us freshmen need to figure out but day by day things will get better and day by day we will feel more at home.