Dear first-semester me,

You'll never imagine you'll change so much in just four short months, but the growth you experience your first semester of college—no matter what came beforehand—is unbelievable until you experience it first-hand. Nothing compares, not even a gap year.

First of all, know that it's okay to be experiencing so many conflicting feelings right now. You're excited because you've finally found the right college for you, the place you love and can't wait to spend the next four years at. Yet at the same time, everything is new and a little scary, and it's okay to feel unsure, and even sad, about things. It doesn't mean you're unsure of or sad about your school itself. You can have rough days and still ultimately like your environment. You can acknowledge negative emotions without fearing that somehow you've chosen the wrong place. Your friends here and you family back home don't expect you to be happy all the time—no one is. Adjusting to college is an ongoing process, and no one expects you to have your life together all the time.

You had trouble putting your mental and physical health before your school work in high school, even though you always told your friends to do so. You were in such a pattern and mindset of always pushing yourself as close to your limits as you could—and sometimes past them—that it was too hard to break, even at the end of senior year. But now it's different; now you're in college. You're here because you want to be here. This should be a rewarding and fulfilling experience in every aspect, and that's only possible if you put self-care ahead of everything else. Literally no one does all the readings in college, and you don’t need to be the exception to that. If you need to schedule your day or allocate time differently than others, that’s okay; everyone has different needs and everyone has different ways of attending to those needs. If you want to go to bed before midnight on a Friday night, go for it; there will be plenty of times during less ungodly hours to hang out with friends. If you need to get up earlier than everyone else to get your day started, or spend more time in your room because you can’t focus on reading unless you’re alone, that's okay.

Your high school methods of studying are not the best ones to apply to college. Most of what you did in high school you did because you had to. Let's be real: you wouldn't have taken notebooks full of notes for AP Euro if they weren't checked every week. If highlighting cuts it for you, that's fine. It doesn't matter what you did in high school, and it doesn't matter what works for other people. All that matters is that your new methods are tailored exactly to you,—not to an old high school teacher—help you retain the info, and that are time-efficient.

Don't join clubs or organizations just because people you want to be friends with are involved in them. So many people do this first semester, and the appeal makes sense, especially when you're still trying to find your place, but it's not worth it in the long-run. Spend your time and energy on a few things you feel really passionately towards, instead of on ten things you really don't care so much about. It will become a struggle to motivate yourself to go to the meetings for things you don't actually care for, and you won't feel involved even though you're actually over-involved. Your time and your energy are precious, so spend them how you want to. You'll meet the right people and find your place through participating in the activities you genuinely enjoy doing anyway.

You're going to be open with your new friends about things you never spoke about during high school. You'll reach a level of authenticity inside yourself that you never knew previously existed. It will feel amazing and liberating. But then it might also feel weird, because you have a best friend back home too, one whom you tell absolutely everything to, except now there are things he doesn't know, maybe even a whole version of you he doesn't know. Don't feel guilty about this. It doesn’t somehow mean that you’ve found better friends or that your friendship at home is lacking something; you’ve just found different friends with whom you connect with on different aspects and levels. But also don't feel like you can't go home and be the same person you are at school with your best friend back there. You won't freak him out or any of the other irrational thoughts going through your head. Best friends grow and change together, and accept the other as they grow and change. You've been doing it together for years, and it's not any different now, it can just feel like a lot because it's so natural to change so much so quickly in college. You love and accept each other unconditionally and that won't ever change.

When you come back for second semester, you might have this overwhelming feeling of “Who on earth was I first semester?” But don’t beat yourself up about this. Adjusting to a whole new environment with entirely new people, living conditions, classes, and situations in general, is really hard, and that process both makes you do things you’ll look back on later and want to change, and helps you grow and change for the better.

Yours,
A more authentic, sure-of-herself, semester-wiser version of you