By: Prisha Mark
Entering college is a huge milestone for a lot of individuals, and usually is coupled with anxiety about keeping friends, making new friends, and establishing yourself while staying true to who you are. Though this seems like a very individual experience, every single college student goes through these same emotions and struggles. As we slowly start meeting new people and start new friendships, we begin to wonder: Who are our actual friends? Who will stick around for the future? Where can I establish myself on campus?
For me, I struggled a lot during the first few weeks of college. As an ambivert, sometimes meeting new people can be incredibly overwhelming and draining, especially when I value alone time a lot. As freshmen, we were thrust into so many club expositions, welcome activities, syllabuses, and new classes. I tried my hardest to keep up with everything, sign up for clubs to find my groups on campus, start new friendships, and keep up with classes all at the same time. At first, I thought I was doing ok, but homesickness crept in and lingered despite my attempts to push it away. Certain friendships started falling through. I felt overwhelmed trying to keep the few friendships I have while working on campus and keeping up with clubs, and the number of assignments in my classes started picking up. During this time, my homesickness and feeling of not belonging grew, and finally reached its peak one weekend. This weekend I, unfortunately, fell sick with food poisoning, and if anyone else has ever gotten sick at college, you’d know it feels terrible. All I wanted to do was go home forever, and I struggled to find the positive characteristics of college. I seriously considered transferring, but my parents and friends helped me realize that I needed to give college another chance.
I ended up going home that weekend, but I came back with a fresh mindset. I started doing a similar morning routine I had back at home, which helped with some of the homesickness, and I also started taking things more slowly. For example, instead of exhausting myself trying to meet people, I started focusing on the few friendships I had and furthering the relationships I have with those people. Eventually, I started meeting more friends of friends, which helped me realize that there actually are people on campus similar to me. I also started focusing on a few clubs that I’m actually interested in versus spreading myself too thin among multiple clubs. Now, I’m able to put my time and effort into the clubs that I enjoy and benefit from. Lastly, academics. I’m still struggling to find the proper time to finish my assignments, but slowly I was able to figure out the schedule for when all my classes have assignments due. It still is a little confusing, but it eventually gets easier and you find ways to be productive with any free time you get.
College is definitely a huge shift, emotionally and physically. If I could give any advice to incoming freshmen or anyone who is struggling with this change, I would say this: stay true to yourself, find routines you did at home, and be patient and give yourself time to adapt to college. Everyone adapts at different rates, but it’s important not to push yourself too hard the first few weeks to establish yourself, especially when you have all the time you need to find the right clubs, organizations, and people to surround yourself with.