You are finished with high school, or only have a few days left. If you are anything like I was, you are so sad to be ending this chapter, but already looking to start the next. You are at an awkward point in time where you want to be a kid again, but you want to grow up at the same time. You have so much to appreciate and look back on, but what you have to look forward to cannot be put into words. To put it simply, you are about to start the best year of your life.

Whether you are moving in with your best friend since second grade, or a girl you met online, that person will become one of the most important people in your life. She is the one who will be there when you are crying about that awful grade on your statistics test, or the fact that you are not used to being away from your family for this long. She is the one who will share your Cheetos, take turns with you vacuuming, and make up weird nicknames for your dorm room. She is the one who will help you have a better decorated door (or at least try) than your neighbors from Colorado across the hall, and the one you will get ready with to go out. Your walls will be covered with pictures of the both of you. You will have matching bed spreads and lights hanging above your window, but none of those cute decorations or material things will compare to the bond you share with your freshman year roommate.

Please, please, please -- go out and have fun. These are the things that will make being a freshman so special. These are the things you will smile about when you look back on college. You are on your own, now. Become your own person. Do things out of your comfort zone. Join a sorority, be a member in a club that will help you in your major, volunteer at an animal shelter near campus, donate blood at the local blood drive. Become a better you. This is a time for you to grow and change and find your place.

There is going to be a girl you meet on a different floor who will become like a sister to you. She may not be in your sorority or from the same city as you, but as the year goes on you won't be able to imagine life without her. She also might be mean when you meet her in a sober driver car during your first Syllabus Week, but I promise, if you give her the chance to make up for it, it will be worth it. She is the one who will make you watch good, but sad, movies until you are crying happy tears, the one who will scratch your back and snuggle with you when all you want is your mom and your big warm bed at home, and the one who will encourage you to be the best you can be whether it's your boosting your academics or your self-esteem. She is also the girl you can count on at the end of the year to feed you because you ran out of meal swipes. She is the one who makes the dorm feel more like home.

This dorm room that you are moving into is going to look like the ugliest little space of a home when you move in, but the friends you are surrounded by, the monograms, canvases, pictures, memories, laughs, and just the act of being a freshman in this very room, is what is going to make your college experience mean so much to you.

The girls on your floor will become familiar faces, and when one of them transfers colleges, it will be as if a piece of you has left. These bulletin boards with the millions of tiny holes from decorations, the closet doors that never stay shut, the walls with little chunks taken out from people hanging posters and pictures up, the way the light shines in a certain way at different times during the day -- these are the things you will get used to and what makes this place home.

This room can comfort you when you need it most. These walls hold 58 years worth of girls' secrets and stories who have lived and thrived in this exact space. So to the girls moving into my room in the fall -- don't take for granted your time in this place because I would do anything just to relive these moments.

So, hug your parents and thank them for giving you the opportunity to receive a higher education at such a great university. Start planning the decorations from that super cute room you found on Pinterest, even though it will probably never be that cute in this old dorm. If you are ever questioning it, definitely order the pizza. Always be nice. Never forget to do those online quizzes in your psychology and statistics classes. And once you get here, throw yourself out there and never look back because this year will be the best year of your life . I am confident you are ready to live it.