The pivotal early morning comes after weeks of anxiety, Target purchases, and mental run-throughs of any possible scenario. You wake up before 6:00 (don’t worry, that’s the last time it’ll happen in a while) and join your parents in loading the last bits of luggage into the car. Your mind is fuzzy as the car pulls out of the driveway, and you try to comprehend that you won’t be back for three months. Despite wanting to leave for so long, it feels bittersweet to finally be going.
The nearly four-hour drive consists of an upset stomach, nibbles at a donut, and a failed attempt at sleeping. In what is perhaps a desperate latch onto the old and familiar, you text your best friend, hoping for some last words of wisdom. Finally arriving at your dorm spurs on an unbridled, uncertain friendliness in you that is encouraged by the cheeriness of RAs and the thought that new people are watching.
That overpowering feeling of clueless maturity?Â
It’s not just adrenaline – you’re going to feel more grown up than ever before in the next few weeks.
That fear that the new faces around you are just going to disappear after these first days?
Don’t listen to it – that girl that passes by the van just as you climb out is going to be one of your best friends.
Honestly, things will initially be a little rough. The inaugural hours on campus are go-go-go. You meet your roommate, who’s also covering up her nerves with friendliness, and you become more at ease with each other when both of you cry saying goodbye to your parents. You’re both counted off into an orientation group with your nearest neighbors. Everyone there is just as uncertain as you are, but, at first, you’re still going to feel like an outsider among them. The emotional and physical exhaustion finally hits you at nighttime. As you settle into a still unfamiliar bed, the noise of boys visiting with your neighbors keeps you awake a little longer.
The next day holds a phone call from your family when your grandfather happens to be visiting them. For some reason, it’s his voice that kicks off your vulnerability and slight homesickness. You may not believe it, but everyone else is still lost too, trying to find their niche. You’re all kept on a tight schedule of icebreakers, lectures, and meals, and during a down moment your SAINT mixes your group with a boys’ group to play a somewhat pointless game. You line up next to the suntanned and gangly boys, told to link hands and send a squeeze down the row.  Â
That guy you somehow ended up next to on line? You have a guess at who it turned out to be, but the other half of you thinks he was just one of those faces that really did disappear after orientation.
You’re sick of icebreakers by the third day and sit out on a particularly rambunctious-looking one. Another girl from your orientation group stands next to you on the sidelines. Watch how snarky you get, but share the silly comments you have about the game – the other girl will laugh too, and you’ll bond with her instantly. By the end of the day, along with your roommate and your new friend, you’ve met a whole group of people that will cushion you in these first months of independence (thank Trivia Night for that). You turn eighteen on the last day before classes, and spend the night eating cupcakes on the soccer field with these people.
It becomes one of your most memorable birthdays ever.
The faces of professors will initially resist to stick in your memory too. You sit among all of the other freshman English majors as the department staff files into the room with welcoming smiles. At this point, you don’t know if you want to be an English major. You picked it simply because it’s what you knew best.
Take a deep breath. You don’t know it yet, but you’re right where you’re supposed to be academically. Pay attention to those teachers introducing themselves – they’re going to be how you realize you’re in the right place. Eventually, one of them will sit with you as you struggle to write about Tennyson. Another is going to write you a recommendation letter that helps you go abroad. One even gives you his own guidebooks to use when you’re in that foreign country. Speak up in class – it’ll be worth it.
Maybe all those nerves beforehand were for nothing, but taking the time to fret seems that it will always be a part of you. Those first few days are odd – some moments will be forever blurry when you look back. Those are probably the times when you shuttled back and forth between feeling lost and thinking that this is the best thing ever. Other moments remain so lifelike that you’ll feel that you’ve returned to Ryan 334 and that you’re still the young girl who had never left home before. Yes, my uncertain freshmen, the journey ahead is going to be a little scary and sad at times.
But, honestly?
The rest of it will show you how easily the things that are meant to be – your friendships, your passions – just kind of happen.Â