It seems as if it was just yesterday that my roommate and I walked into our tiny little dorm room for the first time. I remember looking around at the empty walls and trying to picture what this place would look like lived in while wondering if it would ever actually feel like home. I remember my family saying that it was time for them to leave and feeling terrified to be left two hours away from the place that I had always called home. And I will never forget that first night all alone, staying on the phone all night with my best friend, both of us scared to death of what the next year would bring to us.

Now, here I sit, in the same tiny room, with pictures from new memories covering the walls, and my best friends one floor down, and I honestly cannot believe that in three short weeks that freshman year will be over. Looking back on the school year that will be ending so soon, there are a few very important things that I learned.

First, everyone was right when they said that you will change so much during your first year of college. This was something that I was so hesitant to believe when I first came here, but they were right. You will change your major probably more than once. You will change your friends and the best friends you had in high school that you thought were forever will grow apart. You will change your opinion, change your style and inevitably change your hair color (trust me, I did five times). But when you look back, you realize that change really is a good thing, and that out of it comes growth.

The next thing that I learned, is that you really do meet some of your best friends in college. Going into my freshman year, I thought that I had already met my lifelong best friends, but I was wrong. People grow apart in college, and we begin to make our own paths and focus on our own lives, and that's okay. I never imagined that I would meet the people I now call my best friends during my first few weeks in college, but I am so thankful that I did. The people that you meet in college will change your life. You make so many new memories, inside jokes, and plans for the future that you never even saw coming. A year ago, you could've never gotten me to believe that my best friends in the world would come into my life freshman year, but I am so glad I was wrong.

Lastly, I learned to not take advantage of the opportunities that I have been given. I am here in this amazing university to better my education and to be able to one day do something with my degree that will impact the world in a positive way. If I have learned anything over the last year, it is that I am so lucky to be where I am today, and to not take that for granted for even a second.

You will never have another freshman year. After your first year of college is over, you will never be a freshman again. This last year has taught me more about life than I could have ever imagined, and looking back I am honestly sad to see it come to an end. I will miss my tiny dorm room and all the memories that were made in it. I'll miss the new feeling of the school, and knowing that I have a whole four years of college ahead of me to look forward to. It's crazy to think that this year is already over because it feels like just yesterday that we arrived for the first time. Time really does move faster than you think.