Regardless of what I’m about to tell you. My freshmen year rocked. And I can honestly tell you that it was by far the best and most memorable year of my life, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t come with its fair share of miss-steps. Actually that is probably an understatement. I wish I could say that it was by no fault of my own that I came by so many misfortunes, but most of the heinous situations I landed myself in were 150% my doing. So as September of my sophomore year closes and I sit down to write my first ever Her Campus article, I decided to be merciful and possibly help some little “freshies” avoid the many misadventures I was unfortunate enough to experience my first year on the hill.
1. Most Girls Dress Cute for Halloween
Maybe this is common knowledge? Or maybe I should know that normal girls dress cute? Well no, not me. I would be different. I would be “fun” and “crazy”. Well as fun and crazy as a girl can be when she has a 48-hour rule to abide by. So what if I couldn’t go out? I would party in Dinand! Get homework done and get my groove on while still making sure I kept my voice at a whisper. But what would I go as? What would be the most prolific costume to wear while dancing in the glass window of Dinand that would make passersby go “Hey I wanna know that girl!” A banana. A banana costume would surely win me friends. You know who didn’t think so? The librarians, who almost kicked me out for being a disturbance. And the kids who walked by me and thought they were hallucinating. Many took pictures, including the girl who gave me the costume. She looked at me and said, “I bought this costume in sixth grade when I was socially awkward” (She eventually came around and dressed up with me to study).
2. Everyone Throws Up in College…
Some are just more fortunate than others and get to do it in private. I didn’t have such luck. It happened in Kimball. During Sunday brunch. In front of a table of people. Yes, almost a year later I’m finally admitting it. And yes I proceeded to run out of Kimball out of severe mortification without apologizing. I will also say now that it did make for one hell of a story. Needless to say I didn’t go to Kimball until after we got back from Thanksgiving break.
3. You’ll Have Your Fair Share of Technical Difficulties…
And in more than one sense of the word. Everyone breaks their phone. It happens to the best of us. But it might not be okay to break it 5 times in the span of 10 months. How did I do this? That’s a question I just can’t answer. But I can tell you this, holding your phone, in heels, 6 flights up doesn’t always end too well. Sometimes it ends with a bruised butt cheek, and a phone that isn’t cracked, but that has its innards littering the floor of Wheeler basement. You really just can’t fix that, can you? Oh, and my phone mishaps didn’t stop there. Way back in the start of my freshmen year Yik Yak was hot, someone else used their phone to embarrass me. I was really feeling myself one October day because I had actually decided to put on a skirt instead of my standard practice gear. I’d even put on make up. Nothing could stop me. Well nothing but a Yak that read “To the girl in the red shirt, skirt, and boots: you just walked across Hogan with your skirt tucked into your electric blue undies.” Solid day.
4. You Don’t Always Have to Be the Good Friend
I still really haven’t learned my lesson from this one. I honestly love being the good friend. I’m always putting others first and taking care of my friends. As much as this is a great ideal, sometimes it can bite you. Or more accurately punch you in the face. A lot of my friends are guys and as funny and ridiculous as that can be sometimes, it can also get you into several situations you really aren’t equipped to handle as an 18 year old girl. One of these situations happened to me during a Wednesday night visit to the 18+ bar Varsity (RIP). One of my guy friends decided he was going to start a fight with a Worcester native who was, at the youngest, 35. I being the tough, athletic, tomboyish girl that I think that I am, decided I would be the one to break up this fight and stop my best friend from getting hurt. So what made me think intervening was a good idea? The world will never know. Maybe liquid courage? Maybe just pure blind devotion to my friends? What I do know is as I got in between the two and pushed my friend back and I took a right hook straight to the face. If that doesn’t define a night out at Varsity I don’t know what will.
5. Have a Decent Idea How to Flirt or At Least Have a Filter
I am, in my truest self, also a boy. Not in the way I look or dress, but the way I think and sometimes act. I’m simplistic when it comes to interactions and I shy away from drama. The rules of “Girl World” have never made sense to me, and honestly I’ve gotten into arguments over not being able to really follow them. What’s worse is I’m an awkward boy and this is extremely evident when I am put in any situation where I’m expected to be flirty. My freshmen year I actually had a flirtation with a guy that ended in him walking away without another word and a blank smile on his face that said, “What the heck did I just listen to?”
6. Get Your Life Together
My soccer team calls me “The Frazz” of “Frizzy Tizzy.” If that doesn’t clue you into my lack of organizational skills, I don’t know what will. I have always been that girl who is messy, late, and altogether anxious about most aspects of my life. This uncontrollable tendency to have nothing in my life planned out or put together has blown up in my face about 700 times too many to count. There are two instances that really stick out for me as times when my extreme disorganization really got me in trouble. I’m a student-athlete, and as an athlete at HC you are expected to be where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there. No if, ands, or buts. And no one to remind you of it either. So one day when I decided to take a nap after class, I set my alarm like I would any other day. My roommate left when it was time for lift thinking I would be right up after her since I had napped in my practice kit and didn’t have to change. My alarm didn’t go off. I was 45 minutes late for lift, and the week before I hadn’t handed in an assigned packet so I was already on shaky ground with our new lift coach. When I finally arrived, my coach made me push a 10-pound weight in shuttles for 200 yards. I spent the rest of the year trying to get him to not hate me (pretty sure he still kinda does). Another thing you’re obviously solely accountable for is your schoolwork. By the end of the year, I was just kind of done. I had sat through a year of common core classes that I really wasn’t interested in and by May I was just over it. What didn’t help was that my final paper for Montserrat (SPOILER: not a real class but it can still tank your GPA) was due during Spring Weekend. I literally didn’t hand it in for 3 whole days, but I did ~party~ for those 3 days. Looking back it was a straight power move, and freshmen year me was definitely a straight savage. But my Montserrat professor didn’t seem to agree and my B+ in the class plummeted to a C-. That did wonders for my GPA.
Well here I am a year later telling you that although my freshmen year was fraught with terrors almost too ridiculous to be real, I survived. Some how I made it to my sophomore year alive, well, and with a group of friends who are honestly the best people I’ve ever known (mostly because they’ve been right there messing up with me). I guess in the end what I want people to take from reading my personal stories of mortification is that most of these horrific events led me to meeting the people who would soon become my best friends. And shortly what were events that used to make me blush, turned into events that my friends and I relayed to each other in fits of laughter. Yes, sometimes life is unfortunate but it moves on and those times pass, but what doesn’t is the people who you made those memories with. Yes I took some severe missteps while crawling my way to the finish line of my first year at Holy Cross, but I take solace in knowing my friends and I had more fun than all those kids who played it safe and didn’t publically humiliate themselves countless times like we did. At the end of the day, my freshmen year has taught me so many things about myself and about the person I want to become. The mistakes I made my first year have taught me what I need to do in order to succeed my second time around, and although I’m not going to get overly confident in my immanent success just yet, I did buy my first ever planner, so you be the judge.