I am halfway into my first semester of junior year and I'm beginning to realize a few things that I wasn't expecting at this point.

Every year is different.

I came into college thinking all eight semesters would be the same. Same friends, same types of classes, same schedule, same person. But I am now seeing how each of these transitional years are so very different.

It doesn't match up with my expectations, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I expected I would have everything together, the perfect balance of classes, social life, studying, me time, and work, but turns out that is just not the case. I thought I would be more ready to leave college and be an adult, but I see how hard it is to balance everything and how very expensive everything in the world is.

I am beginning to see how much I don't actually have figured out.

I'm still learning a lot, whether this is about living like an adult by cooking for myself, cleaning my home, turning in my rent on time, or just in terms of my education and how much more I want to know about the fields I want to go into or the skills that I still need to learn. This is a learning process and I need more time.

Here's to three and a half semesters of figuring things out and embracing change and transitions.