The more my impending college experience loomed on the horizon, the more my mom wistfully repeated “I wish I could go back to school.” She loved college. She had participated in various clubs and organizations; she told me about her different boyfriends; she reminisced about her and her friends’ shenanigans. However, my mom is also someone who acts like they’ve known everyone in the entire room since birth.

I am not that kind of person, but I wish I was.

I promised myself that I would be more social, more involved, in my college experience. While I attended high school, my introvert tendencies ruled until senior year. By then, clearly, it was too late to become fully involved beyond honor societies and Scholar’s Bowl (I’m still bitter that I never had the chance to participate in Model UN). Since graduation, I have viewed college as my official do-over button. My bright and prospective chance to start over. To reinvent myself.

I forgot that change does not happen overnight.

Yes, I participated in recruitment and joined a sorority. I stepped outside of my comfort zone, crossed that line, into the unknown. Yet, here I am, sinking in guilt for turning down party invitations. For staying inside while my extroverted roommate steps out. For being “that person” who always has homework to finish and whose first home is a library cubicle. For finding refuge in my dorm because it is too draining to be around people constantly.

“These will be the best four years of your life!” insisted my mom. She declared that on Move-In Day, and those words have followed me, almost haunted me, ever since. How are these supposed to be the best four years of my life if I am drowning in homework? If I tear up whenever family members ask me about college? How does this stand against, on average, sixty or seventy more years of life?

Then, someone said the right thing, or perhaps I finally forgave my own introverted tendencies, but I realized that I still have time. Four years’ worth of time. Four years to become more involved and be social. That I did not have to live vicariously through my mom’s stories. That this sense of isolation would not, could not, last forever.

If you are reading this and feeling alone in a new environment as well, remember: we still have time. We have the lifespan afterwards -- all the years when all of this is said and done. College is not the peak of our entire lives, no matter what coming-of-age movies wish to tell us.

Regardless, let me know in four years if everything turned out okay. I hope it does for the both of us.