It’s the most hectic time of the year. Finals are stressing you out, you have to pack your stuff, you need to finalize your summer plans, and you need to do so many things that making a list would only discourage you. Yet, in the midst of this madness, you somehow find yourself sitting down, in your dorm room, realizing that the once decorated brick walls of your humble abode have returned to their prison-style flare and just like that it dawns on you, you only have a few hours left as a college freshman.
It feels as though just yesterday, you were learning about all the things that college would and would not be. You can remember awkwardly walking across a stage, diploma in hand, shaking your high school principal’s hand. You start to question whether these past eight months are just a really vivid dream you can’t wake up from or if the physics department has finally deciphered the secret to time travel and made you their first subject.
Point is, it’s over.
Freshman year is essentially one of life’s biggest lessons. In it, you learn that laundry doesn’t happen on its own and that it’s okay to wear pants twice before washing them. In it, you are forced to think creatively as you attempt to cook meals in a miniature microwave. In it, you learn to build relationships with the people around you as you create a small community of humans, co-inhabiting a dorm and helping each other survive using moral support and good laughs.
You leave freshman year knowing things you never expected to learn in college such as: which type of caffeine works best for you, how many alarms you actually need to wake up before 9 a.m., at which point in the cycle of procrastination you work most effectively, and many more lessons that interestingly have nothing to do with your future career.
You showed up on-campus in the fall full of expectations and fears, and now, all those emotions and thoughts are old news. As you get caught up in the memories that make up one of the best years of your life, just remember, you get to do it all over again. Except this time around, you’ll know what to expect. You’ll meet even more people, you’ll learn a few more academic lessons and you’ll learn even more life lessons.
However, you’ll never be a freshman again. So take the time to sit down and reminisce in the midst of the craziness. Just sit back, smile and think to yourself, “This was the best year of my life.”