At 18-years-old, I was a high school graduate with over-plucked eyebrows that seriously needed to be filled in. Contouring and highlighting hadn’t even been introduced to the beauty world yet. I had ditched the bullies who had tormented me from middle school up until graduation. I went out and got tattoos! I succeeded in pissing off my parents in every way possible! The summer before packing my bags and heading to Carrollton, Georgia was full of anxiety. I tried to push it in the back of my mind, but it bubbled up when I got dragged to Target to pick out bedding and to figure out exactly which shower caddy I would need.

Was I excited to go to college and not have eight straight hours of sitting with hormonal teenagers who either talked about football or flirted with the teacher?

Definitely.

Was I scared?

More than you know.

There was so much that I was unprepared for! I mean, who knew that I’d be spending $260 on a textbook that I would only touch once? I didn’t know that I would need eight textbooks for the five English classes I was taking. I didn’t know I would learn to fill in my eyebrows, for that matter! (Thank the Lord.) Syllabi were at least seven pages on average and I had to follow them to the ‘T’ if I wanted to know what was going on in class. It was culture shock. Long gone were the days of awkwardly sitting in the cafeteria, trying to avoid catching the eye of the popular kids. These are the days of going to the cafeteria at two in the morning!

At the last minute, I found out I was placed in the Honors Writing Program. I freaked out. And then I freaked out even more on my first day of Creative Writing because I immediately had to pull a short story out of thin air and read it to fifteen complete strangers. I ended up having class with those fifteen strangers every single day. College seemed a lot like high school in some aspects, and it didn’t rest easy with me. Instead of eight hours with hormonal teenagers, I had four hours with antsy adults who usually ditched class. High school was miserable! I wanted college to make me into a more likable person.

I didn’t know that college could be so lonely. I remember calling my mom late at night just so I could have someone to talk to. At a school with over ten thousand students, I felt very small and very alone. It was easy to get lost with classes and remember when to eat and how to at least try to be an adult. What hurt even more was when my parents didn’t know how to help because college in the seventies was so much more different. They weren’t juggling seven classes like I was, nor were they in a new environment. I spent many nights wishing I had my mom there to talk me through how I was feeling, so I spent a lot of weekends at home in my comfort zone.

I didn’t think that someone I scoffed at upon meeting would end up being “my person.” Sitting in Geology one early, humid September morning, a big, burly frat guy dressed head-to-toe in preppy gear was muttering to his friends about how pointless the lecture was and he nudged me, trying to get me to agree. I looked at his pristine loafers, baby blue shorts, backward baseball cap, and Vineyard Vines shirt. The sheer amount of pastel made me feel like it was Easter again, and I turned to my friend to giggle about it. That guy? Yeah, he’s my boyfriend, and we’ve been together for over a year. It’s true when they say you never know who you’ll fall in love with. For me, I guess it was laugh-at-first-sight.

The confusion that was my freshman year was a culmination of too many classes (with too few credit hours, at that), too many Pinterest articles telling me I need six lamps for my dorm, and badly-dyed hair. And you know what? Freshman year changed me more than I knew it would. I went from the shy girl who was an easy target for bullies to a published author at the school. I left a stale relationship and explored who I am as a person. I found unexpected passions in classes that the school made me take (seriously, go study Geology or Creative Writing and you will too). My parents became even more important to me, and I treasured any moment I could get with them, even if that meant going home entirely too often.

Coming to the end of my sophomore year, I am a completely different person. I approach the each new school year with more excitement, but that initial trepidation I felt as a freshman still trickles down my spine at times. College throws life in your face and you learn to take it and run. Isn’t that the fun of college, after all?