While growing up, there was always one line that I couldn’t stand to hear, “You’ll understand when you get older.” It's quite possibly one of the most annoying things to be told as a teenager or pre-teen that definitely knows everything...or at least thinks they do.

I absolutely hate to admit this, but now that I am an adult, this phrase couldn’t be more true.

Obviously, your childhood is the foundation of your life, personality, and future, but honestly, nothing is learned more in life than when you go off to college. Since I am in college, I know this will probably sound silly when I am even older and reading this since I have no idea what my life is to become as of right now. But I can speak for myself at the moment.

I have learned and done more in my life in my first year and a half of college than ever before in the 18 years leading up to it. I have truly known the meaning of change and how one day your life is a certain way and then the next day your life is the complete adversary. I never knew that such change within a life was possible, but let’s face it: change is inevitable.

Everything I thought I knew about myself, my life, and my future changed completely, and I found something in myself that I would never have known if it weren’t for change. Transitioning from high school to college is, in itself, one of the craziest changes I have faced in life thus far.

Going from a same day-to-day schedule, seeing all the same people, waking up at 7 am, sports practices immediately following the school day, your best friends, your boyfriend, teachers, and familiar faces surround you every single day became the norm and then BOOM.

You move away from your hometown, family, best friends, and life as you knew it gone in a flash. A whole extremely new experience was waiting, one that nobody is sure of.

Over this past summer, with one year of college under my belt, I had begun going through more of life’s changes. My inner self was changing; realizing the things that were good for me, the friends who were good for me, and created stronger bonds to last a lifetime. I found an inner strength that I have never had before, an inner confidence that I never knew was there.

Where was I hiding all this time? It is as if my soul finally emerged and transformed into something that I was meant to be. I sit here writing this as an independent woman that I never knew I could be with happiness found within myself.

To anyone out there that is going through a deeply confusing and changing moment in their life, it only takes a bit of courage to go through each new day to get through it, and the change is for the better. You cannot stop change, so don’t think that you can. You have to embrace it; trust it.

This is why I have learned to take each moment one day at a time, because you never know how your life will change in a day, a week, a month, or a year.