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 Mom’s ear via old school ENV3 phone about why, exactly, the European History 1500-1789 final was truly designed to kill you. I’ve 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 don’t just mean that the expectations for your academic output are extremely high. Yes, the workload is brutal sometimes and you’re going to be that freak who just cannot stop herself from actually doing the readings before class while you’re 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 aren’t going to go to house parties or keggers or spirit-crazy sports games. Remind yourself of why you chose this very school —the school that can feel like an academic hunger games of ‘who is actually the most stressed, anxious, miserable human in all the land’—instead of beating yourself up for what Barnard’s not or spending your first two years convinced to the core that everyone around you has found these fun, party school things and you’re just doing it wrong.
On that note, learn to forgive yourself. This isn’t a tiny private school in Maine anymore; you’re going to get B’s sometimes and it isn’t going to kill you. You will have a Saturday night with nothing fun to do, and you won’t become a social pariah or permanent hermit because of it. You aren’t 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; that’s 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 isn’t a school that brings fun and happiness and “that’s so college” to you; you need to seek those things out.
Figure out what real friends look like and don’t let them slip out of your life. You will trust the wrong people sometimes. Bad friends or undeserving, mean boys aren’t worth the heartache. Nothing will ever fly by quite like college does, so waste as few minutes as possible on people who don’t deserve your energy. Learn to forgive yourself; well, I actually don’t think I know how to do that yet, so good luck—but you can still try. You aren’t going to get any departmental honors or awards or fancy stamp of academic approval. You aren’t going to graduate with a job or a boyfriend or a taste for beer, but you are going to leave as happy as you’ve ever been at this school, and maybe that’s just as worthy of celebration.
I’m still figuring this last one out too, so look forward to that when you arrive at this moment of existential panic and “all of the feelings” three years from now, but pursue what makes you happy and don’t apologize for it. Whether it’s 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 “English? *Snort* What are you going to do with that?!” in a sea of business-bound friends and classmates, follow your gut instincts and don’t 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 you’re going to chase anything, chase happiness. Not boys, not shots, not A’s 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, you’re 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 didn’t stop to appreciate it before spring of senior year. You will discover that it’s worth it to blow off a night of work and go hear someone incredible speak at Careers & Coffee, even if you’re 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 can’t 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. I’m leaving Barnard in your hands.
Sincerely,
Senior Me