In just a few weeks, I’ll be taking the second-semester finals of my freshman year. With the hit of the submit button on my last assignment or with the last hand-in of a final test, my first year of college will be done. And I couldn’t be more surprised that I’ve made it here.
At times this year went by really slow, especially at the start. In my first semester of college, I found it to be rougher than I thought and a harder transition than I expected. Then, coming into the second semester, I had more fun as I learned to do some things differently. But I still don’t have it all together. Instead, I came away with a couple of life lessons learned:
1. YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT
Coming into college, I had very high expectations for myself socially. I thought that because I was older now and finished high school, the transition to college would be faster. I thought that I could be more outgoing and open within the very first month of college.
I was swiftly proven wrong because I made the classic freshman mistake to think that high school was anything like college. College is a different experience and system altogether, which means you have to experience it for a bit before you know how to move through it. To do that, you have to learn to be patient.
2. ALWAYS KEEP TRYING BECAUSE NOTHING IS FINAL
While I found my first semester to be a bit rough, my second semester was and still is much more fun. Some people like me need time to learn the ropes of a place and coming into my second semester, I had a much better grasp on how to navigate college. Being more social was a very big factor. In my first semester, I underestimated how different college would be, but what I failed to realize was that staying in my dorm was not the answer to dealing with that difference.
The true answer is that to get settled somewhere you have to experience it because being avoidant will only put off the inevitable. And college is much more fun when you’re experiencing it with other people rather than staying alone in the comfort zone of your room.
3. NO ONE CARES ABOUT THINGS YOU CRITICIZE YOURSELF FOR
Not all life lessons are easy to learn. Some you may not want to even accept but eventually, you do. One of these lessons for me was that no one cares enough about you to notice all the things that you notice about yourself. You care a lot about yourself, but the people around you will not care as much. It’s simple but a hard truth that at first, as a deeply caring person, I did not want to hear from my RA.
However, though this lesson was hard to swallow, later in the year I finally understood what she meant in a way that was more authentic to me. I soon took this to mean that the things that you criticize yourself over and agonize over are not what anyone else is thinking about. Everyone else around you is thinking about themselves and so maybe when that voice comes back around in your head to talk smack, remember that probably no one else is thinking that. Let that negativity roll off your back.
College is not one thing. Rather, it is something that changes constantly. College is a stage between your childhood and being a full-blown adult. It’s where you grow up even more and where you become more of who you are at your core. To do that, sometimes you’ve got to let go of the past to let the future shine brighter, especially with the friends you bring with you and the new ones you make. Overall, this year of college has taught me that you can’t be a perfect person, but instead you can be a person who tries and one who learns from their mistakes.