First Year College Experience

My first year of college has been anything but easy. It has been a wild roller coaster that had many, many hills.

College was quite the adjustment. I had to learn to be completely responsible for myself and not rely on my mom nagging me and reminding me to do things. I moved in with my best friend, T she was my suitemate (meaning there was a bathroom between our rooms, but the bathroom doors connected our rooms) along with another girl that we went to high school with, S and my actual roommate was some random girl, F that entered herself into our room.

BIG MISTAKE

T and I decided to go through recruitment, so we moved in a week earlier before everyone else and were able to settle in. Saying goodbye to our families was one of the hardest things we had to do. I balled my eyes out for a little while but, then we had to go to the first recruitment meeting so, we didn't have time to fully process everything. Recruitment kept our minds off everything that whole week because it was a very busy hectic week.

After recruitment was over and we joined the house that we were matched with we were still busy with new member activities and responsibilities still not really having to quite deal with moving away from home.

BUT after a couple of months passed by the homesickness came.

Mine was probably one of the worst cases out of everyone in the room. I called home frequently to talk to my mom, sisters and occasionally my dad. I then started going home every weekend for a couple of months. Then me going home started slowly slowing down. I went home less and less then stopped unless it was for special occasion (birthdays, holidays, and family weekend getaways) or when I was really bored and wanted to just go see them just for fun.

I made more friends in my sorority that I became very close to, D and TC. We had a lot of sorority events that we had to go to as new members. We went to all of them together and grew a very strong bond together.

Things started off well with my roommates but, my classes were suffering. My roommate F encouraged me to go out and party almost every night and encouraged me to skip my classes to do random things throughout the day. I was good at saying no for the most part but, eventually started to cave in because if I didn't, she would get upset with me and it would make things very awkward in the room. Then my best friend roommate T started encouraging the same behavior, so my grades started suffering greatly. But I wanted to turn my life around and fix my grades and my act. So, I held a firm no, I spent more of my time in a coffee shop working on school work, and went to all classes and stopped skipping them and went out less and less.

This did not go well with F and T.

Towards the end of first semester I got into a relationship with someone I met at the end of my senior year, TK. He decided to join the Marines, so the first three months of my college life he was going through bootcamp and we had no contact at all. Then for the next two months he was in MOS School (never really figured out what that was) where they took his phone for the week and he only got it on the weekend. So, our communication was very minimal. We left for winter break and he was able to come home for two weeks during K-State winter break. We hung out multiple times while he was home and we decided to officially be together.

So, I came back to college with a boyfriend, my roommates were happy for me.

But not for long...

I went out even more less. They blamed TK for me not wanting to go out as much anymore but, that couldn't be any falser. I was a big partier my senior year of high school and the beginning of college. And as dumb as it sounds, I am partied out. It just doesn't appeal to me as much as it used to. I don't have to urge to go out and get wasted. I have my future to think about now and I don't want to do anything that could jeopardize that because my future is important to me and they didn't get that.

I was able to go see TK the second week of February which was the first time we got to see each other since December. I was so excited. We had a great time and I definitely didn't want to leave. But it was time for me to come back to reality.

But when I came back home it wasn't easy. So, I threw myself into school work and focused on getting my GPA up. Again, this didn't go well with my roommates. I was tired of being nagged at for not wanting to go out when I was trying to do my homework, so I went to J Hall with D.

Oh Boy! Did I have a surprise when I got back.

It was getting late, so I decided to walk back to the room and finish up my homework there. But F had another plan. As I was sitting at my desk minding my own business F started screaming at me. Asking what my problems was? I was very confused because I've been minding my own business and kind of kept to myself focusing on school. She screamed at me for not talking to her enough and not wanting to go out anymore. To me I feel like that is no reason to come scream at someone. She yelled at me asking why I couldn't have the decency to go to the coffee shop with T but, when she wanted to go, I was on my way to go take a test and she knew that. So, I was very confused. But then realized this was not an environment I wanted to be in any longer. It was straining on me and making my anxiety spike up. D (the friend I made from my sorority) was looking for a new roommate also, so we decided to move in together.

Best decision ever but, I still have some more harassment to get through before I could actually move on with my life.

F sent me nasty texts while I was in class which, helped me confirm that moving out was the best thing I could do for myself. That week a few days later I started to move out I moved the first half of my stuff and came back for the second half that night. F and my roommates had some more surprises for me though. When I opened the door the rest of my stuff was just thrown there in a big pile, they took down all the pictures we had together on the walls and put a sticky note on them saying "we don't want these 🙂", as I was leaving she connected her phone to her Bluetooth speaker from the other room and blared the song by Justin Timberlake that sang "Bye, bye, bye", she unplugged my fridge so the groceries inside of it went bad, and she stole some of my things.

But the harassment didn't stop there.

Every time F saw me walking or going into my building, and she was in her car she would obnoxiously honk her horn at me. She also started parking by our building just for the heck of it which, was something she never had done before. The one time I decided to go out F and T were there. I was terrified but thought maybe we could be grown adults, and nothing needed to happen. But I was wrong to think that because the whole time they harassed me and even involved some of our mutual guy friends. I ended up leaving and come to find out she followed me out wanting to physically hit me.

I was starting to be very concerned for my safety. I left the room as little as possible. I started skipping classes again in fear of seeing her. I didn't go to dinner or lunch in fear of seeing her at the dining center. I barely left bed. If it wasn't for my new roommate D and other sorority sisters, I probably would have transferred schools a long time ago. They have been such an amazing support system and helped me get through that very hard time of the year.

I went to classes again and started to leave my room more and more.

My roommate now understands wanting to stay in on the weekends focusing on school and not getting drunk every night which, has been such a relief. The rest of the year has been super good. I have surrounded myself with AMAZING friends who have already been there for me so much.

Moral of this story is to get out of your comfort zone. Make other friends. DO NOT move in with friends from Highschool. I promise you you'll regret it. Meet new people go through roommate finders through your school. They'll pair you up with people that has the same values as you. I lost my best friend, someone who I thought would be in my wedding. This all could have been avoided if I just moved in with people I didn't know. Another thing to take away is no matter what don't change yourself stay true to who you are no matter what. Don't let other people try to change you and if they do then they're not true friends. Find that group of friends who you can be yourself with and who can respect your decisions.

Be you and college will be amazing!