It’s been a week since I moved into the University of Michigan, and it's been a wild ride trying to get myself together this first week as a freshman.

And boy, am I definitely a freshman. I’m the freshiest freshman, but also not at the same time. That sentence makes sense, I swear.

I’ve spent the week experiencing new things and honestly having fun just getting lost around campus. I made it a goal to do all the college things people think about doing but then never actually do, ya know?

First thing on my checklist – hammocking in the diag. Check. Double Check. Infinity Check.

In the course of two days, I’d hammocked for the better part of seven hours and had been blessed with one of my teachers posting the entire semester of work a week before the first meeting of class. You bet your ass I was more productive than I’d ever been in my life. Check that off my list too – actually being productive in college. But yeah, I also brought a bag of nuts and befriended at least a small portion of the local squirrel population. Heckin triple check on that.

Another big thing on my checklist – walk in the general direction of the main city and see where I end up after 30 minutes of blind walking.

It was an eventful 30 minutes.

In the course of that 30 minutes, I discovered a quaint book/coffee shop called Literati, also had my first sandwich from Potbelly at a price actually manageable for a college student and likely a place I’ll visit once again when I haven’t already invested a small fortune in a dorm meal plan, and been sold a vaguely socialist news article by an equally vague aggressive homeless man in front of a Walgreens. It was wild.

Doing all these things, I felt the wonder of being the freshiest of freshman as I took in the world around me for the first time, just wandering and exploring without any restraints for the first time in my life. It was amazing.

Of course, that's not to say that it was all beautiful sunshine and roses. I got lost multiple times trying to get to class and somehow ended up on the north side of campus when I sat on the bus for what was obviously way too long and didn’t request a stopbecause I didn’t know that was a thing. When I actually made it to class I raised my hand during a lecture to ask to go to the bathroom as I had been taught by the glorious American education system and been annoyedly told that in college you just walk out because the professors and GSI’s (basically fancy teachers assistants that teach the class for the professor) don’t give a crap one way or the other at this level. That was fun.

There’s also just the crippling loneliness and lack of friends that is to be expected with basically a complete reset to your lifestyle and identity as a whole but that just comes standard with the college experience and I’ve met some cool dudes in my hall – even played Settlers of Catan for the first time and that was pretty fun too – but overall I’d say I’m enjoying the whole college thing for now. I’ve got a lot of good vibes and productivity stored up for now so we’ll see just how long that lasts but until then, I’m just gonna keep on experiencing this new chapter of my life – one step at a time.