I couldn’t have asked for a better experience my first semester at college. I had a great group of friends, I was comfortable with my living situation, I knew how to get around everywhere, what else did I really need? But I also spent first semester anxiously waiting for recruitment– the anxiety-enducing process filled with endless girl flirting and walking around freezing to death in a dress and heels, all in hopes that I would end up in the perfect-fitting house. While this concept seems far from glamorous, I was so excited for what was to come.
Come January, it was time, I began recruitment. After the grueling days of being emotionally and physically drained from trying to impress a million other nineteen year-old girls, I was ready to pick a house with girls who I could later call best friends. But this notion came with mass amounts of adjustments. All of a sudden I was responsible for knowing 54 names of the girls in my pledge class, the rules of the house, the art of pairs/themed parties/formals, and everything in between. While I was still excited, I felt stressed. All of this responsibility was piled on me. How was I going to manage this, schoolwork, and vegetating in my room watching Netflix for hours on end?
I have one word of advice– confide in your first-semester friends. It’s likely that you won’t all be in the same house, but they are all probably feeling the same way. Everyone’s social lives are changing and that can be an overwhelming concept. I can’t express how comforting it is to be able to come home and vent/laugh/cry with the people who you’ve gotten so close with over the last few months. Cherish your first-semester relationships, because they can be life-long friends. I can’t wait to experience life together far beyond freshman year. I’ll always go to them, go out with them, laugh with them, cry with them, and do stupid stuff together. To me, my first-semester friends are like Joey, Rachel, Monica, Ross, Phoebe, and Chandler. A group of friends I know I’ll have forever.