I know I am not alone in this, but change gives me the eeeps! The transition to college was one of the biggest and scariest, but now that it’s over—for the first year, at least—I don’t entirely know how to feel.
We spend all this preparation and mental energy building up for the transition into the next four years of our lives. Going from living with our parents, living at home, living in a bubble for 18 years, to leaving that place to start a new chapter.
It is a good and exciting thing, but definitely a big change, so we have to prepare for it. But it almost feels as though after the year it took to get comfortable, two semesters of meeting new people, adjusting to a new bed, adjusting to a new window, adjusting to a new bathroom, adjusting to food and responsibilities and freedom, now we just have to go right back to our bubbles.
And maybe this is just me, but I feel as though I blinked, and the two semesters were over. As the semester wraps up, I see people with the large, awkward, embarrassing bins moving their stuff out of the dorm halls, down the elevators, into their parents’ cars, and it feels like just yesterday I was rolling those carts across the road, away from my parents’ car to my new home. What do you mean it wasn’t last week that I was putting up pictures all around my new room from home? Now I have new pictures from a new home that I want to hang up.
I personally live on campus in a dorm obviously, as you can tell, and while I am not the biggest fan of a dorm room, I don’t think anyone could say that they are. It’s an experience that I’m going to miss greatly. At what other point in our lives are we going to be able to say that we lived on a college campus with thousands and thousands of other students our age, young adults working towards degrees that they care about, figuring things out and having fun all throughout their time?
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I feel as though a lot has been a blur. Time has gone by very, very fast. However, there is a lot that has also not been a blur. The quarantine time was not a blur, the time spent with my family for the first time in a long time was not a blur, badminton in the evenings and movies at night was not a blur, the room in our house dedicated to college pack up was not a blur and the rental minivan to get all my stuff down here into my dorm was not a blur. I will always and vividly remember my first dorm room. My bed against the wall, across from the shared sink and next to the window. I will always and vividly remember the people that I’ve met in this first year of college, my zoom mates, my hallmates, my suitemates, my professors, my roommate and the people I have run into and come to know and love here at Florida State University.
When I drive home back to my little city in Georgia, I know I’m home when I get off the interstate and I see this tiny little wood shop right off the exit. When I see that wood shop, I know I’m home. When I see red bricks and palm trees and Spanish moss, I also know I’m home.
I blinked, and I went from having one home to two.
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