To all the high school seniors getting ready to make some of the biggest decisions of your life, be prepared because (get this) you don’t know everything. You think you know everything because you’re seniors, you’re getting ready to graduate, you’re at the top of the high school food chain, etc. but you don’t. You don’t know college.

I was in the same position you are currently in; I thought I knew everything there was to know about college. I had taken some summer classes and lived on campus during that time, so I thought that I was prepared for college because I had “been there, done that, and got the t-shirt” (literally, they always gave us free t-shirts), but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

You think you know college because your family has an apartment in the college town of your favorite team and you’ve spent every weekend of football season there since you can remember. You think you know college because you go to all the home games and know where the library, student union, Starbucks, and cleanest restroom are on campus. You think you know college, but you don’t.

You think you know college because you have older siblings who come home and tell you all about their adventures. Hearing these stories and telling all your friends about them makes you feel as if you've lived them yourself and that you know everything about being a college student.

You don’t know college until you go up to the financial aid office and you want to pull your hair out, scream, cry, and punch a wall because there is nothing they can do to help you. Or you get lost on your way to the financial office because you have never visited that part of campus before in your life.

You don’t know college until you’re studying for your first set of midterms/finals and you’re staring at your notes at 2 a.m in the library, praying you won’t fail them.

You don’t know college until you’re down to your last $5 and you’re debating where or not to spend it on that Cookout tray or on that those notecards your need to study. You’re doing an unconscious experiment on yourself on how far you can make those last dollars stretch and how long you can go without doing laundry.

You don’t know college until you’re laughing until you’re crying with that girl that sits next to you in your PSY 101 class. Little did you know that sitting next to this stranger on the first day of class would lead to Y'all becoming each other’s best friends for life.

You don’t know college until you’re skipping class in order to recover from that frat party/thirsty Thursday adventure. Or hating your roommate because she had an 8 a.m and she turned all the lights on while you were trying to sleep.

You might think you know college because college from the outside just looks like parties, football games, and never-ending fun, but that’s only half of it. College is hard just like life is hard.

But college is also amazing. It’s full of little moments that will change your life. It’s where you meet some of the most important people of your life. College is where you find your adult self and discover who you want to be.

College is the best and worst time of your life. But you don’t know what it is really like to be in college until you are there.