I was once so excited for college. I had a rough senior year but by the end of it I thought I had discovered who I was meant to be.I decided I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college because I wanted to get a different style of learning. I was accepted in December without ever visiting the school. I didn’t feel like I needed to. I was simply so ready to get to college and get out of the house. Over the summer I truly felt one with myself and I was so ready to conquer freshman year. I bought so much stuff for my room and collected more and more all summer. I talked with some of the new upcoming freshman in a group message that was made and I really felt like it would be my year to shine. My first day was so exciting. Once my family left I started meeting everyone. Everyone was so nice and shared that feeling of awe. We moved in over the weekend so there were a few days before classes started. I met more and more people and did everything with my roommate because I assumed that we would become best friends. The first few weeks were amazing. That new feeling was making the world seem full of endless possibilities. Everything soon changed however. I was in this friend group that was very large and some things had been going on within the group that was making everyone mad with eachother. Some kids were being left out. Others were starting drama with each other. I was one of the members that was barely there so the rest of the group didn’t know me too well but they knew that one of the boys (we will call him Narcissism) didn’t like me. He was angry with me because I invited him to my room one day and kissed him. (Something you should know about me right now is that I struggle with really liking attention. He was giving me attention so I played along. I know it’s terrible.) I didn’t actually like him so he moved on to my roommate because he was desperate. Little did he know however that my roommate had a huge crush on him and she was a little crazy. From the first day she always talked about how she was there to find her husband. Anyway, he invited her to his dorm one night and they cuddled and made out and stuff. After that she (my roommate who we will now call Chance) told me all about she. She talked as if she was in love. Inside I knew that Narcissism was only using her but I didn’t want to crush her spirits so I stayed out of it. Next thing I knew she was doing everything for him. He got sick and she cleaned up his throw up and was buying him anything he wanted. I went with her to his room and he was trying to force me to buy him stuff too. I was so surprised by his character. I told him that I don’t do stuff for people unless I like them and I called him a pussy for acting like he needed to be taken care of. He kicked me out of his room and I was very upset so I took to snapchat as anyone my age would. That’s when the boy I love first really came into my life (we will call him Olympus). He came to my rescue to talk about everything. After that we became good friends. Thats how I wanted it at first, just friends. Then the group decided to have a meeting to fix some problems. Let’s say it didn’t work and eventually everyone faded into new groups. Olympus was still there for me as a good friend. He even comforted me one night when I was crying, and I never cry in front of anyone. My roommate soon had a crush on Olympus and his roommate, Wizard, was giving me attention. My curiosity got to me and I ended up kissing Wizard in front of Olympus. Very bad decision! I was angry the next day because Wizard stopped giving me attention. I didn’t like him but I missed the attention. I went to his room pretending I needed homework help from Olympus. Olympus and I ended up going on a walk to talk about things and soon enough we were going on many walks and I found out that I had a really intense crush on him. He was a quiet boy that kept to himself and faded away in crowds. He was usually alone in his room so I started going there everyday. I couldn’t help but blush around him and hope he liked me too. There was a problem though. As you recall my roommate Chance liked him. She was already convinced that they would get married. She told him and he told her that he didn’t like her like that and would rather be friends. She went around saying that because Olympus was from another country he must not understand what liking someone is and he probably likes her but doesn’t know it. I knew after that she was crazy. I kept hanging out with him though and one day we confessed that we liked each other. We didn’t know what to do though. My roommate got suspicious and even threatened me with a knife (yeah she had a thing for pocket knives). She said that she would beat my ass if I liked Olympus. We continued to keep it a secret until finally it came out because everyone knew it was obvious. Chance didn’t end up hurting me but she did hate me and Olympus. Olympus and I started dating on October 3 which I thought was cute because it was national boyfriends day and a significant mean girls day. I fell in love with him so easily. He was perfect in every way to me. I just found myself becoming more and more jealous of his girl friends (who almost all had started liking him at some point). Also Olympus didn’t know much about relationships being that I was his first girlfriend. He didn’t know that treating other girls certain ways was not very appropriate. We had some very different views. We fell deeper in love but I ended up only focusing on him. I had no other friends. We constantly argued out of my insecurities. We had good days and we had bad days. By the end of the year however I was fed up with a small school. I couldn’t stand the people who I had come to hate and I didn’t like all of the bad feelings associated with the school. I ended up transferring and so did Olympus. So I guess my take on freshman year is that it is full of new experiences and everyone is all over the place trying to try everything. You are just a freshman so figuring out how to balance friends and school becomes hard (for most people). Also, there are students that care very little about school and are there to just have fun. It seems like there are no morals on a college campus and people will stab you in the back so quickly. Most boys are just looking to hook up and there are so many different girls fighting to find the right guy or just be a hoe. Some people are crazy. Some people are sane. You will meet so many different types of people in college. Freshman also make the mistake of becoming obsessed with relationships. This isn’t healthy. It takes away from time to yourself to build your career and make connections. I figured out that I have a lot to learn about life and dealing with college. First, no matter how sure you are that you have found yourself, you are constantly moving and changing. You have to always keep figuring yourself out to survive and truly be happy. Next, remember that you can spend all of your time focusing on other people but at the end of the day you are only one person. You can’t control other people but you can come to figure out where you are going and what you are doing. Finally, remember that no matter how other people make you out to be, you get to decide who you are. You don’t have to prove yourself to people or try to make up for your mistakes (trust me freshman year is full of mistakes). Just work on yourself and be who you want to be and have faith that everyone who is meant to be there for you will fall into place.