Telling people that I’m a senior in college still feels weird to say. Thinking about how I’ve spent much more time at school than what’s left ahead of me, and how most of that time will likely be spent focusing on what I’m going to do after school instead of trying to make memories in the present, is even stranger.
As the campus became filled this week with new students, I’ve been reminded of my own eager and anxious first year. Somehow, it feels like it just happened yesterday and seems decades ago at the same time. So many changes occur during a person’s freshman year that shape who they are by the end of their college experience. While a part of me does wish that I’d known some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years early on, I also know that I wouldn’t be the same person that I am today had I not experienced many of them firsthand.
As a freshman, you don’t know as much as you think you do – but that’s a good thing. Whether this realization comes to you through classes, socializing or living on your own, at some point during freshman year the teenage certainty starts to fade away and glimpses of adult life settle in. This might seem scary at first, but it can help you reevaluate what you actually want to learn in your time at college instead of trying to achieve the unrealistic expectations that you had coming into your first year.
A school as big as Rutgers can be the perfect place to start over each year if you need to. With a school that has five distinct campuses in one place and plenty of majors to choose from, you have the unique choice to not only switch your course of study after the first year but to move to a different place entirely. And you can even view every year as a fresh start if you end up living somewhere different from year to year, which can help you assess what you really want out of your college experience each time you come back to campus.
Life will sometimes teach you the same lessons over and over again until you actually learn from them. This applies from events as small as what time you really need to leave your dorm to make it to your morning class on time to recognizing patterns in your relationships with others. Which goes both ways – with how well you treat the people in your life, and how well they treat you. You likely won’t learn right away, but even recognizing the need to grow from your patterns can be a big step. And believe me, your future self will reap the benefits.
The best way to get the most out of your classes is to approach them with an attitude of wanting to learn as much as you can. I know that this sounds a little like advice your parents would give you before your first day of classes, but there is truth to it. You may not feel the need to pay as much attention to your grades as you did in high school, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying altogether. The more you sign up for classes on topics that you genuinely want to learn more about, the more you’ll enjoy your time in them.
You need to put in effort to keep people in your life, and they should too. Back in high school it was a lot easier to stay in contact with your closest friends on a regular basis. There was more free time to spend with them and you may have even had a lot of classes together. But between different majors, work schedules and extracurriculars, staying in touch with friends in college requires a lot more effort from everyone involved. Remember to pay attention to those who make your hangout sessions a priority.
Everyone moves at their own pace. This becomes an especially important concept to grasp after the halfway point of your college years. As graduation inches closer to a reality, it may suddenly seem as if everyone around you has their life figured out more than you do. But this isn’t the case. Some may be setting up internships in their field and planning to apply to grad school, while others may just be declaring their majors or realizing that they want to change what they’re studying. Everyone moves at their own pace towards whatever their next phase in life may be, and if you remind yourself of this instead of worrying about why you’re not at the same place, you will save yourself from a lot of unnecessary stress.
Most of the time, the thing that’s stopping you from doing what you really want to do is yourself. Part of the reason why I’m as excited as I am to be one of the Co-Campus Correspondents for HC Rutgers this year is due to the fact that just two years ago I was almost too shy to even speak up at my first meeting. I hadn’t written much other than an essay here and there in over a year, and wasn’t even sure if I wanted to be that involved with the club. Looking back, I’m more than glad that I did speak up, because I haven’t stopped writing since.
But one of the most important lessons that I’ve only recently begun to understand is that you may leave college an entirely different person than who you were when you came there. And that’s probably the best experience one could ask for.