If my first year of college were a television series, it wouldn’t be glossy or perfectly paced. It would be messy, emotionally loud, occasionally funny, sometimes exhausting, and deeply human. The kind of show where you grow attached not because everything goes right, but because you recognize yourself in the chaos. Each trimester wouldn’t just be a chapter—it would be an episode, complete with arcs, cliffhangers, breakdowns, and moments that quietly change you forever.
Trimester One would be the pilot—the episode where everything begins, awkwardly and loudly. The one where the main character still doesn’t know who she’s becoming, but is brave enough to start anyway.
It opens with leaving home—not just parents, but a baby shih-tzu Coco, who’s the soft constant of unconditional love. It’s learning how silence sounds different when it’s not your own room anymore. It’s the first night in a hostel bed that doesn’t feel like yours yet, staring at a ceiling that holds no memories. Trimester one is learning how to miss without falling apart.
It’s also learning how to live with someone who was a stranger yesterday and suddenly knows your sleep schedule, your bad habits, your quiet moods. It’s learning how to share space—physically and emotionally—and realizing that boundaries are not always respected, even when you try your best to respect them yourself. It’s understanding, painfully and slowly, that maturity often means choosing peace over confrontation, even when it feels unfair.
“Pilot” is about first friendships. The tentative conversations that turn into inside jokes. The relief of finding people who care—people who notice when you’re quieter than usual, people who sit with you when things feel heavy. It’s about becoming the friend who helps others when they’re down, even when you’re still learning how to help yourself.
And of course, trimester one is about academics hitting you like a plot twist you were not prepared for. Midterms arrive with no warning, endterms loom like final bosses, and suddenly you’re studying not just for grades, but for survival. Group study sessions turn into emotional support circles. Caffeine becomes a personality trait. You learn how stress lives in your body for the first time—and how relief feels when you make it through anyway.
The pilot doesn’t tie everything up neatly. It ends with exhaustion, growth, and the quiet realization that you’re no longer the same person who arrived with an overpacked suitcase and an underprepared heart.
Trimester Two would be “Bound 2”—not because everything is romantic or perfect—but because this is the episode where connections deepen, where people become tethered to each other in ways they didn’t expect.
This is the trimester of change. Of switching roommates. Of grieving what didn’t work while making space for something better. It’s the episode where you learn that endings don’t always mean failure—sometimes they mean alignment.
It’s also the episode where you have people who help you when you’re down. About not always being the strong one. About realizing that support doesn’t make you weak—it makes you human.
There’s heartbreak woven into this episode, too. One of your closest friends has to take a trimester off for personal reasons, and suddenly, college feels emptier. It’s learning how to miss someone who’s still alive, still yours, but temporarily gone. It’s carrying their absence with tenderness instead of resentment.
But “Bound 2” is also where friendships bloom into something deeper. This is the episode where you get closer to your people—not through grand moments, but through everyday living. Shared meals. Late-night conversations. Sitting together in silence without needing to fill it. It’s realizing that love doesn’t always announce itself loudly—sometimes it just stays.
And then there’s the new roommate. The unexpected gift of someone who knows you better than anyone else does. Someone who sees through your moods, understands your silences, remembers the small things. Someone who feels at home inside a room that finally feels safe. Someone who cares about you more than anyone ever has before, and makes you feel seen. This relationship becomes the emotional anchor of the season—the one that teaches you what it means to be seen without having to explain yourself.
Trimester two is about expansion. Making new friends. Becoming closer to people you already know. Learning that your heart has more room than you thought. It’s the episode where laughter feels easier, where belonging feels earned rather than forced, where you stop counting days and start living them.
If the first trimester was about learning how to survive, the second was about learning how to stay.
Together, these two episodes tell the story of a first year that isn’t finished yet—a story still unfolding. A story about leaving home and finding it again in people. About learning boundaries, breaking gently, and rebuilding stronger. About understanding that growing up doesn’t happen all at once—it happens in episodes, quietly, between ordinary days that end up meaning everything.
And if this really were a show, I’d keep watching. Not because it’s perfect—but because it’s honest.