how i have grown as a person (after one year of college)

It took me a while to get to a point where I felt removed enough from the stress of finals week to be able to speak candidly and profanity-free about my freshman year of college. But I am here now, trying to understand in real time what exactly happened during the last two semesters.

The very concept of college is an odd one when you’re looking at it from the front end. I remember. Classes are easy to worry about; you’ve just sat through thirteen years of them. You know, more or less, what awaits you on the other side. But it is nearly impossible to prepare yourself for what you’ll encounter outside of the classroom, no matter how hard you try. The stuff you expect is not going to be the stuff that changes you.

No, the change will come from the hundreds of new faces you meet within a week of arriving. It will happen when you commit to a club or get your first job or stay up all night talking to people you haven’t grown up with, have never known outside of this bubble that brought you together.

You will expand as abruptly as your world does. You will learn that making friends can be as simple as offering a Caprisun or a microwaved cookie or a place to sit at dinner. You will learn that even the most intimidating of resumes can’t encompass the down-to-earth warmth of a goofy personality. You will learn to stop stalking people on LinkedIn (this may take a while).

You will learn how to share passion for what you care about. You will learn to take up space. You will learn to stop apologizing for what is not your fault. You will fall in love and you will unfall in love; you will understand that the process is not graceful but it is nearly always worth it.

You will find that if you can guide a group of 40 fourth graders around campus for an hour, you can do anything.

You will make mistakes. This is important. You will make mistakes. If you’re like me, you will make many mistakes. You must learn to be okay with them; this realization may come after drinking three cups of coffee on a Sunday afternoon, or before sitting down to work on an essay at two o’clock in the morning. Without soft permission for mess-ups and goofs, mistakes look like wasted time and regrets. This is not how you grow.

You will understand - for maybe the first time - your limitations. You are not good at that. You do not care enough to be good at that. This is okay, though. You are okay at this. Not great, but there is room. And you will take it.

You will come home and everything will feel different. You will go back to school and everything will feel different. One day, you will realize that the different is inside of you. This may scare you (it scared me). This is okay. It’s smart to remember that this is one of those steps towards the firm little dream of someday that you hold somewhere, tucked in the back of your heart.

I am not unrecognizable. I cut my hair but I look the same. My mom tells me this when I ask her if something has changed on my face; perhaps I’ve grown taller? No. But when I stand in front of the mirror, I do not look at myself the same way I used to.

You will learn to respect yourself; you will survive even the days you thought were going to end you and you will do it again and again and again.

That is how you will grow during your first year of college. This is how I’ve grown during my first year of college.

#freshmanyear #yearinrecap #college #growth #perspectives