After a whirlwind of Welcome Weekend activities and three weeks of school under my belt, I can officially say that I am a real college freshman. Saying that phrase comes with a surreal sense of freedom as well as old age. It’s true, I feel both young and incredibly old at the same time. I remember when I was 10 years old, college seemed like such a distant possibility, like something so far in the future, it would never come.
College was something that adults did. When I was 10, I had this image in my head of adulthood: that one day, you just got it. Everything fell into place and you became super wise and never had any more problems. You understood all the mysteries of the universe, you became the advice-giver instead of the advice-getter, and things just came easy. But now, I’m living this ‘adult’ reality and it’s pretty different from what I ever imagined. I may be an adult in the eyes of the law, but I still look at the world from a child’s perspective, and sometimes I feel like I’m just playing dress up.
On that note, I wanted to share three very relatable problems of kidulthood as experienced by a college freshman:
Discovering the meaning of life/who you even areThis past summer, I had my very first existential crisis. I was at my best friend’s graduation party, and like all the cool kids, he had a bouncy house. All of us former high school seniors had commandeered the bouncy house from my friend’s younger cousins who were attending the party, and as they were standing outside of the bouncy house waiting to get in, one of them says, “Are those ADULTS in there?” And another says, “Nah, man, they’re just kids.” Those children literally summed up my entire identity crisis in two sentences.
Living with people
I have had my own room for about 11 years (I shared a room with my brother until I was about 7), and it has been just my parents and me living in our house for nearly 2 years. Here I am sharing a space with another human once again, and it’s so surreal. Even sharing common spaces with the rest of the girls in my dorm is difficult. I have learned the hard way that not even body wash is sacred when it comes to thievery…
Choosing what to eat all by myself
Now I have to make the healthy choices. Living at home, I had to make dinner with whatever groceries my mother bought. Here, anything is up for grabs. Especially with Notre Dame having such great dining options (I even heard somewhere that we are in the top 50 for best college food), it has been a struggle. Once, I had French Toast sticks and tater tots for dinner… That’s it. I drowned the French Toast in syrup, and I even went back for seconds. I’m pretty sure that was my rock bottom.
I don’t get how other species do it. Here I am complaining about leaving home (but I’m still calling every other day or so), when harp seal mothers abandon their babies just 12 days after they are born—12 days! The harp seal pups are left alone in the cold, vulnerable to predators. Of course, I was not abandoned in the arctic, and I’m glad my parents stuck with me for 18 years, but this awkward phase of being a grown kid is a challenge. First year of the rest of my life, here I come.
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