The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at GCU chapter.
As a sophomore, I didn’t just struggle in my freshman year; I struggled from my freshman year. Weird, right? How can someone struggle from a year? That’s what I thought when I first started school. College brought so many new challenges, and they didn’t all appear on the first day. Throughout the entire year, it seemed like never-ending obstacles kept arising—feeling homesick, finding the right people, losing those people, and feeling unmotivated to change anything about it. A part of me knew I wasn’t alone in these feelings, but it sure felt that way.
Life Changes
The first big change that started to get to me is the one I think most people talk about: being away from home for the first time. I’m an out-of-state student, and living away from my family and friends was a hard adjustment. When I first got to school, I thought it wasn’t going to phase me. It wasn’t until a week into my classes that I got a fever, and my sickness turned into homesickness. Being far away from the people who had cared about me for most or all of my life while feeling horrible was the first time I struggled in my freshman year.
After that, while some weeks I would feel good and wouldn’t miss home as much, other weeks were rough. Learning new skills was hard—going from being able to rely on others when I was growing up to having to figure things out for myself. I felt a growing distance between who I was before college and who I was in college. I knew that it meant I was growing up, but a part of me didn’t want to.
Having to push through these feelings was hard, and it took me almost the whole year to make them feel bearable. I got closer with my roommates, and we relied on each other more—not for everything, but it was nice to know that there was someone there when I needed it. I started to embrace the new experiences that came with moving out, while knowing that I will always carry the girl I once was.
Making and losing friends
Going into college, I always considered myself an extrovert. I love talking to people and getting to know them, and when I’m at home, I always feel most comfortable when I’m around my friends. One of the hardest struggles I’ve faced since being at college has been making friends and keeping them. Since I went far from home, it was a fresh start for me. I didn’t know anyone, and I couldn’t fathom where I should begin to find the people who were right for me.
Coming into a school where so many people were from out of state, I was introduced to many new cultures. We all came from different areas with different norms, which made it harder for me to relate to others as someone who had lived in the same city my entire life. At least at home, I had a foundation; here, I had nothing. It took me a whole semester to solidify friendships that I genuinely enjoyed.
That semester’s progress didn’t last long, because within the first two weeks of my second semester, two out of three of my friends transferred. In those two weeks, I lost all the progress I had made. I was sad, and at that point, I didn’t know if I even wanted to try starting over again. I had already done it once—why start again? It was hard, and by the end of freshman year, I still hadn’t fully recovered.
It wasn’t until this year, after recharging over the summer, that I reached out to make more friends. It took me a few weeks to find the motivation, but I started joining more clubs. I had found most of my friends last year through classes, but this year I was only in a few in-person classes. I know it sounds cliché, but joining clubs really helped me. Not only did I find people to talk to, but I also found people I related to on some level. It didn’t happen all at once, and it’s still happening a month and a half into the semester, but I’m finally recovering from last year.
Lack of motivation
The hardest challenge I faced was a result of all the other struggles: I wasn’t motivated. This issue developed slowly, while the other two challenges arose earlier in the year. I didn’t realize I was struggling with a lack of motivation until I was halfway through the year. I felt sluggish in my life, and didn’t want to leave my room or talk to people. As someone who used to enjoy going out a lot, this was especially hard.
I still felt a lack of motivation going into my sophomore year because I thought it was too late to start over. Eventually, I realized that it’s never too late to begin again or try something new. While it might not align with other people’s timelines, that doesn’t make it wrong.
i wasn’t alone
When I was going through all of this, what made it worse was that I felt I was facing my battles alone. All of my friends from back home seemed to be thriving at their schools, and everyone at my college appeared to be doing just fine. But so many people go through similar struggles, whether it’s for a month or an entire year—even my friends from home, who seemed to have everything together. My freshman year is something I’m still trying to recover from, but I learned so many lessons along the way. If I could go back and change it, I wouldn’t, because it made me the person I am today and I love that person.