To a Freshman Just Finishing Their First Year of College

To you, a freshman just finishing their first year at college,

To start off, I want to congratulate you.  You did it, you finished your freshman year!

Yes, you may be fifteen pounds heavier, never want to see your roommate again, and have two pennies left to your name, but you did it.  You made it through the most boring of lectures and the dining halls, the drama with your newfound friends and the fraternity parties, the mistakes and triumphs, the phone calls to your mother and the tears over late night pizza.  You made it through the days of recruitment and trying out for the triathlon team and realizing that maybe you aren’t the star athlete like you were in high school and that laundry really is a pain in the butt.  You made it through a year of moving to a new place, making new friends, taking challenging courses, and learning a little bit more about yourself every day.  And that is something to be proud of.

Think back to when you first came to school.  If you were anything like me, your parents helped you pack up all of your trillions of items that you couldn’t leave without even if they wouldn’t fit into your dorm room.  Your skateboard you might learn how to ride with your new college friends, a picture of every person you ever knew from home, and your three thousand outfits for any occasion all piled in the car for the trip to your new home.  You wondered how it would be to meet your first roommate.  Will she be awkward? Is she going to be my new best friend? What if it ends up like that creepy movie where the roommate ends up killing the girl? You started to get nervous that maybe she wouldn’t be your best friend ever and in that case, who would you hang out with? How do people meet people? Who do you eat with?

The anxiety took over until you opened the door to your bare door room and realized it was all going to be okay.  Everyone was just like you. Everyone was eager to make friends, scared to eat the dining hall foods and ready to get away from their parents.  You knew it was going to be okay.

I know everything wasn’t perfectly perfect like your Instagram or Snapchat story might lead on.  You had to make sacrifices, just like any college student does.  Whether it was missing out on calling your mom, running on two hours of sleep, or maybe going out to a date dash or mixer instead of studying for your test, it was inevitable.  You realized you couldn’t do just everything like you once thought you could.

But that’s okay because in the end, you learned a lot.  You learned that fraternity boys may not make the best of boyfriends and school actually might matter a little bit in the end.  You learned about the history of the united states or about accounting or about the about how the human body reacts to all that alcohol people (maybe even you) consume on the weekends.  You learned that you really do need your mother and regret all the times you said you hated her in high school and that your friends from home are amazing, but the friends you made here are even better.  You learned how to live with another person and make a really nice salad in the dining halls, and you learned that it’s okay to go to class in leggings and not be perfectly perfect all the time because no one is.  You learned to balance and friendship and that maybe the gym is your friend though you’ve been neglecting it. 

And as your finals are taking over your lives and you plan your plane ride back home, you can sleep easy knowing you did something some people can’t.  It may not be perfect, but it could have been perfect for you.  For whatever your summer plans may be, know they’ll seem boring compared to nights out with friends and late night junk food and you’ll almost wish you were sitting in class wishing your professor was lecturing you just so you could experience it one more time.  You’ll miss the endless dining hall food and the smelly old dorm that was the most fun you never want to have again, but you’re only learning more and more everyday and have more spontaneous college adventures to come.

So remember the times as a freshman, where you took vigorous notes in class and had to ask a few people where “The Hill” was to go party, and laugh about the moments later with the friends you have made.

May your summer be full of sleeping and tanning and your sophomore year be more memorable than any before.

Sincerely,A girl who misses freshman year