I’m sure you’ve heard it a hundred times before in some variation: “college isn’t like high school,” “college will be so full of new experiences,” “you’re going to change so much in college.” While these things get very annoying to hear very quickly, they’re so true. But I don’t think those very generic phrases even close to cover it.

Because right now I’m sitting here eating homemade fried rice with spam cut up in it—yes spam—that my roommate made, wearing one of my nicer outfits with bright pink slippers and fuzzy socks, dreading changing into real shoes so I can go to a ballet later. College isn’t just full off new experiences; it’s full of new, weird experiences.

I’m a sophomore so I’ve already been at this a year, but I can truly say that I’m doing something nearly every week that surprises me. College is about embracing those surprises an being flexible.

Thus far, I’ve been through power outages, evacuations, more fire alarms than I can count, and still, there’s always something new to test me. In the past year I’ve eaten fish jerky (my roommate stresses that it’s actually a cephalopod, but fish jerky just sounds so much more effective), driven across Omaha just for a donut at 10 PM, and stayed up late into the night singing along to High School Musical.

The point is that I would have never imagined that I’d be doing any of these things and now I could not imagine my college experience without them. So when someone tells you one of the lame, generic phrases listed above, smile and nod and know there’s so much more. Of course college isn’t like high school. Thank God it isn’t! Classes will be harder and you’ll actually be independent, but use that independence to take advantage of the weird, the fun, and everything in between. Because that’s your new “normal”—hope you like fish jerky.