As a brand new, fresh out of the box college student I can tell you just how nerve-racking it is to make those first impressions. You spend your entire summer coming up with a “fun fact” about yourself and writing mini-bios in your head. When your classes start inching closer, you anxiously come up with a plan to really stand out to all your professors. You come up with ways to try and make friends and make yourself seem fun and cool. It’s exhausting.
By the time you arrive, you’ve managed to absolutely bomb all of it. No one talks in your classes, you’ve only made one friend, you answered the question wrong, and when that one guy tried to talk to you in the elevator you managed to say all the wrong things. It’s disheartening.
You wake up the next morning. You do it all again, and again, and again. Your first week has passed and by this time you never want to hear the questions “Where are you from?” “What’s your major?” or “What’s your favorite color?” ever again. And then your second week passes and you’ve managed to find a club or two to join and just hope you don’t manage to screw that up too. However, it does get easier.
As time passes you realize you do not need to look at your schedule for the room number of your Spanish class anymore, you found mail services, the dining halls are less scary, you went to the CVS without your roommate, and you rode the bus – you missed your stop, but hey, you rode the bus. You’ve made another friend, fought a few roaches, and conquered the battle for a washing machine more than once. It turns out that those first impressions didn’t matter as much as you had anticipated. You realize that your days here will continue and there will be plenty of opportunities to perfect the skill of making good impressions. You will learn. It will be okay.