I attended the same school from my junior kindergarten to senior years. Some of my very best high school friends are people that I've known since we went on second grade field trips together or since we saw each other in our really bad seventh grade makeup phases. I never really considered going to a different school. During all the senior year excitement and panic over applying to and getting into college, it didn't hit me that I was looking at new schools where I wouldn't know anyone or where anything was or the best place to sit in the cafeteria (sorry, dining hall). But I picked my new school anyway, traded out green and white for black and gold, and switched from saying "go Bucs" to "go Deacs."

And then I got to school, and wow, did it hit me. Yes, there was a new social life! A dorm to decorate! A roommate, which was a shift for me being an only child! But there were also new classes in new buildings in a new city. And also, turns out college is actually school? Like, you spend a lot more of your time doing homework than you did in high school? And it's really weird, especially if you got so used to your high school workload that you knew exactly what classes you could skip reading in and when you could do the homework during lunch?

One part that I didn't get of going to a new school was the not-knowing-anyone. I have a surprisingly hard time with fresh starts. If I know anyone in my general vicinity, I feel like I have to fit their idea of me. So my great idea of college as a chance to be one hundred percent me kind of slipped a little when a kid I have known since we were four lives on my floor and I see people from middle and high school literally every day.

But no one cares. That's the (not as depressing as you might think) thing I keep telling myself- no one cares. No one will care in a year. Probably, no one will care tomorrow. I'm learning that I really don't have to be who I was in middle school, or high school, or during orientation week, or yesterday. Because literally no one cares. I didn't make some of my best friends until my junior and senior years of high school, and even though I hope I'm not waiting that long here, it just reminds me that everyone is still figuring out what it's like to go to a new school.

So we're all new kids here- yes, even the people with siblings at the same school who always seem to know what's going on. Everyone is just trying to figure it out. So if you've never been the new kid before, either, just take it easy. Yeah, things are new and hard and scary, but if you feel like you're making mistakes, no one's going to notice. Everyone's too busy doing them at the same time you're doing you. You don't have to be who you were in high school, because your fresh start is what you make it- and you can have a new one whenever you like.