Dear Freshman Me,
You have four exhilarating years in front of you. That’s an approximate total of one thousand four hundred and sixty days, or three summers, or eight semesters, or about 40 classes. Don’t waste it.
You will begin your college career feeling as scared but equally excited as ever. You will wander around the halls of the Academic Building searching for the advising room that’s only 10 steps away from you. You will walk into the wrong section of your Arabic 101 class and won’t realize it until halfway into the class. You will move into your first and last dorm and become instant friends with your roommate (And you will also almost accidentally feed said roommate meat… who is a vegetarian). You will have a hard time making friends with the people around you, and eventually you’ll realize that everyone else is having the same issue and you’re not alone.
Once you begin to get comfortable with your new surroundings, you’re going to make some of the best (and unfortunately worst) friendships in college. You’ll start off a conversation randomly with two girls in the Traditions cafeteria and learn that they’re roommates. Those girls will take you in as their third cohabitant, and eventually you’ll learn that one of them was only there to hurt you while the other was there to become your anchor for the next few years. You’ll start off college with one of your high school best friends, but she won’t be there forever and you’re going to have to learn to accept that. Coincidentally, you’ll become great friends with a girl you hated in high school because life is funny and works like that sometimes. In fact, you’ll gain and lose a lot of friendships throughout these next few years, but that will just make the ones that last all the more special. You’ll meet some pretty amazing people everywhere. You’ll meet people who will inspire you to be the best version of yourself, including the girl who you’re now vicariously living through (shoutout to Ukraine) and the girl who pushes you farther than you could ever push yourself (shoutout to New York). You’re going to join a sisterhood that will teach you a lot about yourself, and you’ll always have them on your side (much love to my penguins). People will come and go in your life, but you’ll have no issues holding on to the ones who mean the most to you.
You’ll fall in love. You’ll fall in love with people, both platonically and romantically. You’ll get heartbroken. You’ll get heartbroken by the guy who didn’t want what you had to offer. You’ll get heartbroken by the guy who took too much from you when you were at your most vulnerable. You’ll break your own heart from focusing on the wrong things at the wrong time and missing opportunities. You’ll be told that college isn’t for everybody, and maybe you should reconsider your future. You’ll go through constant doubt and uncertainty about your future since then, but you’ll come to the conclusion that you are in charge of your future and if you want to do anything in your life, you can. You will constantly change and you’ll see that change is okay. You will learn from each and every experience you go through because you know it all happened for a reason.
As soon as you begin to get a handle on what you’d like to do in life, your mind will change. And it will change again. And again. You’ll be a bit envious of the people around you who have their futures set in stone, but you’ll also be really excited to see what the spontaneity of your life will bring. You’re going to learn a lot. You may learn more outside of the classroom than you will inside, if not as much. You’ll have dreams and you are not going to give up on them. Life is short and precious. You’ll get down and lose sight of that every once in a while, but don’t worry, you know how to snap yourself out of feeling down. You’ll learn that you’re happiest when you feel free. At some point, you’ll convince yourself that it’s a really good idea to get a dog in college. You’ll end up doing a lot of things that people don’t really understand, but you’ll be fine with that because you’ll be happy. Once the four years start to wind down and you look back on everything you’ve accomplished, you won’t regret a thing. Everything you’re about to go through is going to contribute to the unique person you are, whether it harms or helps you. So remember to take a deep breath anytime you feel like it’s all becoming too much to handle, and never forget that this is only the beginning.
Yours truly,
Analicia Martinez