Flashback to freshman year, I was a lost seventeen-year-old girl who only knew she wanted the things she had— good friends from home, an amazing family, being in a relationship, and about to embark on my first year of college. It was to my surprise that thinking these things were the only things I needed was the mentality that was holding me back.

My freshman year I lived two lives; one, being here at URI and, the other life, being at home—with all the things that I loved. Every time I left campus I was so excited to leave but was never excited to come back. Not because this campus wasn’t for me, but because I never had the courage to accept that it was. I refused to let the opportunities for new friendships and exploring a new state to cloud the love I had for my “original” life, the life I had back home. And that was my worst mistake. My fear was the one thing holding me back from everything that I could have.

That is, until I fell, I fell into my fears when I applied for my RA job that I now have, I fell when I had the courage to open up to people that I now consider some of my best friends, and I fell when I decided to further my educational career into something I love. All of these once foreign things help shape you into that strong someone that you have no idea you will even become. So, choose to let them take over, fall and be courageous enough to let these new things change you. Change is scary but it is something so worth it in the end. It’s something that allows you to be endless.

If I asked my freshman year self if I loved my college, the answer would be a resounding, “h’yell nah.” Three years later, with new and old amazing friends, an infinite spirit, a lot of love in my heart, and enough tears to fill a small lake later, and that answer would easily be “freak yea.” I wouldn’t trade this small coastal New England state school for any other dinky college. Because this is the place I am supposed to be. It’s at this campus where I was an RA to be able to meet my closest friends, and it was on the Narragansett beach sand that I sat and cried when my Grandma had passed, it was on my run on Flagg Road where I decided what I wanted to do with my major, and it was on every adventure and in every laugh with every one of my dearest friends I have made here that helped me come to the realization that I truly love my life.

To any freshman feeling this way, even if you’re not a freshman, I urge you to fall. You have to immerse yourself into something scary every day, you have to meet new people and indulge in the possibility of new life; a life you have never seen before. Because you don’t know how it will shape you but, I can tell you, that it will help you build yourself up from something more than the three things that you thought made you. Because you have no “original life,” you just have this one. And this one life is as good as any to fill with new things that you have never known.

I found that I needed to accept the things that I could not change because, little do we know, that place or that thing you are dealing with in your life is exactly where you need to be…whether that be in pain or heartbreak, struggling to fit into a college or confused about where your future is going. This path will lead you somewhere, you just need to trust it. You just need to fall.

If you can’t trust it, try to trust me, I used to call my sister and tell her that I hated it here and that I was never happy because I just wanted to be home. She would say to me, “One day, when you don’t even realize it, you’ll be smiling. You’ll be smiling because you’re happy with yourself, with your life and everything that you have ahead of you. And when that time comes, call me, because I want to hear how happy you are."

I didn’t believe her either.

Hey, Danielle, it’s Bri, here’s my call.