The First Year Experience
Freshman year. Depending on whether you’re entering high school or college, the definition varies a little. As a high school freshman, you probably rode the bus because you didn’t have a license, and your dad was still smart enough to “help” you with your Algebra homework while you cried when you couldn’t figure out the meaning of x.
As a college freshman, your parents either came with you to your dorm where your dad lofted your bed while your mom cried in the corner, or they sent you on your way with “Good luck!” and a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix that was holding on for dear life.
By all means, high school and college are completely different ball games, but they have one thing in common: you are back at the bottom of the totem pole. We now must enter the shoes of high school freshmen but with a little more feigned confidence because although you probably don’t know what you’re doing, you are now considered an adult (even if you’re parents still insist on you sitting at the kids’ table during family reunions) and must, as cheesy as it sounds, fake it til you make it.
From my research which includes being in college for a total of three weeks, I have found three types of freshmen. There are the freshmen who thrived in high school and walked onto campus with an unhealthy amount of confidence that they were about to have the best years of their lives.
There are those who had been waiting to graduate from high school since the first day of freshman year and had a hopeful glint in their eye because this was the year everything would change: they would break out of their shells, meet their lifelong best friends, and completely reconstruct their identity because they could now be whoever they wanted. And then some don’t fit in those categories and are kind of just floating around. If it isn’t evident enough, I am part of that last group.
You see, a lot of people either want to hold onto the years they had in high school because they peaked and will never close the yearbook, or they can’t wait to get out because they were sure they were experiencing the worst years of their lives and could only go up from there.
Well, I’m not sure if any of you in that last category can relate, but I enjoyed high school for what it was, especially all the spirit, drama, and stability that came with it. College has always been some looming part of life that was guaranteed, and even hours before I showed up, it didn’t seem real that I was leaving all things familiar behind.
The first time it truly hit me that I was in college was when I slept for 11 hours straight, and my mom never came to wake me up. I didn’t end up missing class, but I learned the valuable lesson of setting an alarm.
” I’m sure I’m not the only one experiencing these things, and no matter what type of freshman you are, I know for a fact that you are most likely just as confused as me when it comes to college.”
Or when I no longer had to wash dishes for my family’s 8-person household. No explanation needed.
I’m sure I’m not the only one experiencing these things, and no matter what type of freshman you are, I know for a fact that you are most likely just as confused as me when it comes to college.
If any of the things I mentioned resonate with you, I present to you the Freshman Chronicles, a place in the SPECTRUM where freshmen and all those who were freshmen can come together over the shared experiences of being a first-year.
I’d like to say that I will be providing advice and tips for college, but I am just as clueless as the rest of you, so this will most likely serve as a source of entertainment where you will hear of both the highs and lows of an NDSU freshman brought to you by yours truly and the content I steal from other people’s experiences. Until my next entry, I wish my fellow freshmen good luck and God’s speed.