I still remember stepping onto campus for the first time, not with the grandeur you see in brochures, but quietly. Two upperclassmen helping me carry my bags, the halls echoing from how empty they felt. There were two beds in the room. Mine was by the window. Everything felt new, sterile even, the kind of quiet that doesn’t calm but startles. I didn’t know how to make it mine. I didn’t know if I ever could. All I had was hope, not the glamorous kind, but the bare minimum that kept me upright.
Orientation came like a storm: the fastest you’ll ever meet hundreds of people all at once, your name repeated like a chant you hope someone remembers. Those first few days were filled with the awkwardness of first impressions, the hesitations tucked into conversations and the tiny decisions of where to sit, who to eat with, which group to follow. For many of us, everyone was a stranger, and yet, we were supposed to start building a life here.
Some friendships came easily, those moments when you meet someone and feel like you’ve known them forever. Others took work. Some didn’t last. That’s the truth about college no one tells you: the forming and unforming of closeness. It’s not always pretty. It’s not always your fault. But through every connection, brief or lasting, you learn something about yourself.
People often talk about “finding home” in college. But for some of us, home doesn’t arrive with the key to your dorm room. It’s built, painfully and slowly, through moments of shared vulnerability. For me, even after a full year, I still can’t call my dorm room home, but I’ve started calling people mine. That counts for something. Maybe that counts for everything.
Writing for the paper since my first week, many of you already know parts of my journey. But the parts that don’t make it to the page, those are the ones that changed me most. The 2 a.m. conversations, the silent walks back from class, the eyes that noticed I wasn’t okay even when my voice insisted I was. This campus has been more than a place. It’s been a mirror. It didn’t just teach me how to think, it taught me how to feel again.
College romanticizes independence, but the truth is, you don’t survive it alone. You learn to rely on those around you, the people who become your middle-of-the-night emergency contacts, your last-minute proofreaders, your accidental therapists. And in the process, you realize the most human thing isn’t strength. It’s interdependence.
But here’s my strongest opinion: freshman year isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s supposed to be a mess. A beautiful, overwhelming and sometimes lonely mess. It’s about trying things you never thought you would, failing more than you’re used to and finding that failure doesn’t mean you’re lost. It just means you’re moving. It’s about realizing that some friendships won’t last and that’s not tragic. It’s freeing. It’s about knowing that you can disagree deeply with someone and still respect their place in your life.
This year for me was not just about finding community, but about losing it, rebuilding it and sometimes accepting that solitude is also a kind of belonging. That growth doesn’t always feel good. That sometimes, you’re just proud you made it through.
So to every freshman reading this, whether your year was a dream or a disaster, I hope you know that just by being here, by staying through it, you did something important. Because college doesn’t give you answers. It gives you space to ask better questions. It gives you the people who challenge and change you. It gives you the quiet courage to keep showing up, even when you don’t feel like it.
As this chapter pauses, and it is only a pause, hold tight to the parts that softened you, the ones that stretched you and the ones that surprised you. Because nothing ever starts again quite like it begins. And maybe that’s the point.
Here’s to the mess. Here’s to the making of something that might one day feel like home. And to those who come next, I hope you don’t rush through the discomfort. That’s where the real magic begins.
