I would love to know who decided to keep it a secret that your first year of college is terrible. No exaggeration, it is flat-out awful and I feel like no one prepared me for that. This isn’t to say that there aren’t outliers– statistics class taught us all that even in a normal distribution, there will always be data that doesn’t fall in line with the vast majority– but, I would venture that for most of us, it is extremely difficult to be a college freshman.
All throughout high school, I used to daydream about college. The fresh start, new friends, endless clubs to join, and classes that I actually wanted to take were beyond alluring. For four years, any social mishap, embarrassing mistake, or traumatic misstep was only temporary, an afterthought that I could chalk up to silly high school memories soon to be laughed at with an abundance of college friends.
When the time finally came to move 6 hours from home and the realization that I was leaving behind everything and everyone I had ever known set in, I started to waiver a little bit in my intense faith that college was a magical cure-all. I still held out hope though. “This is what college is all about,” I thought. I was ready to step outside of my comfort zone and the confines of the small town that I had grown up in. Let me tell you, there was no “stepping.” The only way I can describe my transition to Pittsburgh is if you can imagine pole vaulting out of your comfort zone and then looking back to realize that it had altogether vanished.
No one warns you that making friends isn’t as easy as walking up to people and asking “do you want to be friends?”. No one warns you that classes really are hard and a big jump from high school. No one warns you that it just feels so isolating. I spent an entire semester clinging to platitudes like “keep your head up” and “hang in there!”. I couldn’t fathom ever feeling like Pittsburgh was my home or finding people that made me look forward to coming back year after year.
Winter break went all too fast and before I knew it, I was begging my mom not to leave me there again. As dramatic as it sounds, I pleaded and cried, desperately trying to avoid going back to a dorm room that felt steeped in sadness and a campus that acted as a looming reminder of how far I was from my family and childhood friends.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from my freshman year (as cliche as it sounds) is that it just takes time. As the second semester went on, I began to form a routine at school. I created a mindful set of steps to walk through and each day began to get easier. Slowly, I started to recognize people in my classes and form relationships outside of the classroom. I became more involved in on-campus organizations and honed in on my studying skills. The longing for home began to ease and by the end of the year, I wasn’t just doing okay, I was genuinely happy. Never in my life had I been a particularly patient person, but I discovered that a little bit of patience was all it took to get acclimated to my new environment, and from there, I thrived.
I am so serious when I say that no amount of money could convince me to live my freshman year over again. If you’re one of the lucky people who doesn’t relate, I mean it from the bottom of my heart when I say that I am so happy for you. But if I hit just a little too close to home, just know it gets better, I promise.
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