Dear Freshman Me,
Hi!  Right about now, you would have been flipping out over the revisions for your final First Year Seminar essay and hyperventilating into Momâs ear via old school ENV3 phone about why, exactly, the European History 1500-1789 final was truly designed to kill you.  Iâve been thinking about you a lot lately as my time at Barnard is coming to an end, and as much as it feels a little Freaky Friday to picture us face to face now to see how much things have changed, there is so much I want to tell you. Try to bear with me through my senior nostalgia and abundance of conflicting emotions, Freshman Me. I know you know, like, everything there could ever be to know about college and Barnard, but hear me out.
This is a really, really hard place to go to school, and I donât just mean that the expectations for your academic output are extremely high.  Yes, the workload is brutal sometimes and youâre going to be that freak who just cannot stop herself from actually doing the readings before class while youâre convinced that everyone else has this happy balance of margaritas and papers all figured out. But I also mean that this school is hard socially. You are never going to wake up to a tailgate full of cute boys who want nothing more than to bring you a drink and chill with you right outside your building when you emerge on a Saturday morning. You arenât going to go to house parties or keggers or spirit-crazy sports games. Remind yourself of why you chose this very school âthe school that can feel like an academic hunger games of âwho is actually the most stressed, anxious, miserable human in all the landââinstead of beating yourself up for what Barnardâs not or spending your first two years convinced to the core that everyone around you has found these fun, party school things and youâre just doing it wrong.
On that note, learn to forgive yourself. This isnât a tiny private school in Maine anymore; youâre going to get Bâs sometimes and it isnât going to kill you. You will have a Saturday night with nothing fun to do, and you wonât become a social pariah or permanent hermit because of it. You arenât going to be a big fish in a small pond anymore like you were at home. Everyone here was hot shit in high school in many ways; thatâs how we all got here. But the ones who will find happiness now are the ones who can let that go and make Barnard, make this new chapter in a new place, what they want it to be.  Columbia isnât a school that brings fun and happiness and âthatâs so collegeâ to you; you need to seek those things out.
Figure out what real friends look like and donât let them slip out of your life. You will trust the wrong people sometimes.  Bad friends or undeserving, mean boys arenât worth the heartache. Nothing will ever fly by quite like college does, so waste as few minutes as possible on people who donât deserve your energy. Learn to forgive yourself; well, I actually donât think I know how to do that yet, so good luckâbut you can still try. You arenât going to get any departmental honors or awards or fancy stamp of academic approval. You arenât going to graduate with a job or a boyfriend or a taste for beer, but you are going to leave as happy as youâve ever been at this school, and maybe thatâs just as worthy of celebration.
Iâm still figuring this last one out too, so look forward to that when you arrive at this moment of existential panic and âall of the feelingsâ three years from now, but pursue what makes you happy and donât apologize for it. Whether itâs the ex-boyfriend who no one else truly gets, the internship that seems like the crazy dream of an 11-year-old watching The Devil Wears Prada, or the major that prompts an endless slew of âEnglish? *Snort* What are you going to do with that?!â in a sea of business-bound friends and classmates, follow your gut instincts and donât compromise what you believe will make you happiest.  You can sometimes get an A on a paper you threw together in the final 12 hours before it was due, but being at peace is hard. I can promise you that you will be endlessly disappointed by some of the standards you set for yourself and those around you; if youâre going to chase anything, chase happiness. Not boys, not shots, not Aâs at the expense of maintaining some semblance of a social life. Happiness.
Your work is always going to get done. You are going to stay best friends with many of your friends from freshman year and ride out the ups and downs together. And most of all, youâre going to be terrified and incredibly sad when this is over. You will suddenly notice how gorgeous that magnolia tree is and wonder why you didnât stop to appreciate it before spring of senior year. You will discover that itâs worth it to blow off a night of work and go hear someone incredible speak at Careers & Coffee, even if youâre extra tired the next day. After twenty-one years of watching heartbreaking movies completely dry eyed, you will sob at the realization that college is over and you canât go back again. You will regret every second you spent hating Barnard and pining for real life, so get up from that desk in your little cave in Sulz and go join in.  Good luck, Freshman Me. Iâm leaving Barnard in your hands.
Sincerely,
Senior Me