Why Freshman Year Sucks for Everyone.
We all felt it.
Crying in your dorm room because you were just so overwhelmed.
Maybe you were lonely and couldn’t figure out how to make friends?
Maybe you totally failed your midterms and won’t have enough points for a passing grade?
Maybe you can’t pay your tuition and have no way of figuring it out?
Maybe you just miss home? (Or maybe home is terrible?)
If this is how you feel right now - understand that you’re not alone.
Freshman year freaking sucks.
Don’t get us wrong, many people may not feel this way. And we’re not dooming you to a state of eternal purgatory. But we empathize with how hard and frustrating the first year of college can be because it’s a rite of passage all college grads go through.
You see, the best way we can try to make sense of why the first year feels so terrible can be explained by a sort of universal law. In order to elevate, we have to reach a state of rock bottom. That means things have to get REALLY BAD for us to know how REALLY GOOD actually feels. To ascend means you know how it feels to descend.
This might sound like a bunch of hoopla to a probably 18 year old stressed about finals or feeling lonely everyday. But we want to stress the point that this year is all about you. This is the year of your self discovery. It is your hero’s test. You’re being held to the fire, to see if you have what it takes to become a diamond.
Each challenge calls you to understand yourself. When you miss another deadline in your ECON class, do you give up and accept total failure - or do you try to salvage the semester by scheduling office hours and asking for extra credit assignments? When you find yourself incompatible with yet another potential friend - do you accept that you’re not made for friendship or do you go out and join different social groups and keep meeting people?
Now - this is not to say there’s anything wrong with quitting. It has its merit in some situations. Sometimes knowing when enough is enough is its own test of bravery.
But giving up altogether on your dreams, right in the middle, is not where you should quit. Freshman year is designed to weed people out and make you feel like you’re failing. Remember, you put a lot of work into studying, testing, applying, and planning just to get here. And you know why you did it.
So here is our advice:
Center yourself. Focus on your dreams and ambitions. You don’t have to have it all figured out but just a general direction - like you want to make something of yourself. Remind yourself daily of this desire. Be unshakeable to these challenges. Remember who you are. Meditate on it.
Calibrate yourself, daily, to the vision of your future self. If it helps, think of yourself when you were a child, what did you dream of feeling like when you were older? Now get there. If you dream of being that lawyer, musician, engineer, actor, architect, writer - think of yourself as so daily. If you just want to be happy, work towards that.
Use challenges as your fuel to call to yourself, especially when things are going really bad. Rethink of obstacles as stepping stones versus life-ruiners. This will be your flame to drag yourself out of any downward spirals. They are your inspiration to keep going in the right direction. When you notice yourself falling for something unaligned to your vision, you kick it to the curb.
Whatever you believe, is.
So yeah, freshman year can suck.
But it doesn’t have to always be that way.
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