To the Freshman: A College Sophomore’s Guide to Adjusting to Freshman Year
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We all know how it goes. It starts with the last selfie with your high school friends posted to your private story with the caption “This isn’t real.” Then comes the goodbye. Your throat is choked up, tears are stinging your eyes, and it feels like your world is falling apart. You’re unpacking your whole life into a little box of a dorm room that probably has some sort of mold that will inevitably make you sick. Next, you’ll post the Instagram story of your new dorm with the caption “New Home <3.” Soon enough, your parents have left you alone in your new bed, and your only company is the unsettling realization that you will sleep here tonight, the night after that, the night after that, the night after that, and so on.
Life is tough the first few weeks as a college freshman. To be blunt, it’s traumatic. Before leaving my hometown, one of my older friends said to me and my (sobbing) friends, “I promise you guys it isn’t that deep. Soon enough you’ll be home again and want to go back to school.” At the time, this comment annoyed me and I brushed it off. As a sophomore now, I can look back and gratefully realize that everything he said was true. Therefore, I find it my responsibility to pass down a little perspective to my younger friends, just as my friend did for me.
So, to the freshmen, the first thing you can find comfort in is the fact that it will never be like this again. There will never be another point in your life where you will move away from your family for the first time and take on a complete lifestyle change in a brand new place. But in the beginning, I will be honest with you, it really, really sucks. (Especially to my fellow out-of-state students; my heart goes out to you.) Homesickness is real, and gets especially bad when you start getting sick of the dining hall food and are desperate for a home-cooked meal. The cure for this, I found, was finding little pieces of home that you can bring with you and hold on to. For example, I brought all of my favorite tea from home. When I felt homesick, I went through the familiar ritual of measuring out my loose-leaf tea, steeping it, loading it with (stolen dining hall) sugar, and finding comfort in the familiar aromas that filled my dusty dorm room. I would tell you that the feeling of homesickness goes away, but I would be lying. Even as a sophomore, I still sometimes feel desperate for a cup of coffee on my back deck and to watch Survivor with my family on a Wednesday night. But, again, it’s the small comforts you bring with you that make it manageable. When faced with that gut-wrenching, throat-tightening feeling of homesickness, remember how lucky you are to have a home you love enough to miss.
Another hard moment of freshman year is the canon event of seeing one of your hometown friends post a picture of their new friend group. All you can think is, “Wait, everyone else has friend groups already?” This, at least for me, is when the panic set in. However, most sophomores now will tell you about the phenomenon of the “Week 1 Freshman Year Friend Group.” For some, these friends actually become your lifelong best friends! However, for most of us, this friend group falls apart after the first few weeks. This next point is very important to recognize: You are not lacking in any way if you haven’t made any genuine connections yet! This is for three reasons:
You will make genuine connections. Give it time.
None of your friends in college will be like your hometown friends. You will love them and they will become very important parts of your life. However, nothing can replicate the experience of growing up with someone, of seeing them through all their awkward phases. Your college friends only know the grown-up, confident, wonderful adult version of you. You will not have the same relationship with them that you have with your hometown friends (for better or for worse) and your life will be 1,000 times easier if you recognize this and don’t expect it.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving break. You will go home with the expectation of everything being different. You’re a new woman! A college woman! News flash: everything is the same. Your hometown bagel shop is the same. Your dogs are the same. Your friends are the same like no time has passed at all. (Except for a few new stories.) Summer break is the same phenomenon; everything is as it was. The point I’m trying to make here is that you’re not losing anything by moving to college. You’re not replacing parts of your hometown life with your new college life. All you’re doing is adding. If you haven’t made any best friends in college yet, who cares? Just think about all the people who love you at home. You haven’t lost any of them, and any other connections you make in college are a bonus.
My biggest point is that college isn’t a replacement life for the one you knew, but rather just an addition to it. Take comfort in what you know, and be grateful for the new experiences you will gain.
Strike Out,
Alex Keezer
Editor: Caroline Kostuch
Athens