Finding Your Home
I remember the day I got accepted to Tufts as one of the happiest and most exciting days of my life. The summer following my senior year of high school, I slowly watched all my friends leave for college and I counted down the days until I, too, would be starting my life as an undergrad--one month turned to two weeks turned to one week and finally we were packing up the car to drive up to Massachusetts. I had waited a long time for the moment when I could be at college, but before I knew it, suddenly my parents were driving the 10 hours back home and I was left alone on an unfamiliar campus surrounded by hundreds of strangers. I was a little freaked out to tell the truth.
College can be terrifying and frustrating at first when you realize that it will take some time and serious effort to make your new dorm room feel like home and build up the same kind of close friendships you may have had in high school. Luckily, that very first day, all the nervous freshman were immediately thrown into our orientation groups to start getting to know each other. The thing that always surprised me the most freshman year was how much I was forced out of my comfort zone-- whether it was having to continually introduce myself to new people, going to general interest meetings by myself to seek out new interests, or getting used to living with a roommate-- and how rewarding those experiences all turned out to be in the end. And yes, as a first year student, you absolutely will have a "freshman moment": maybe you ask where you can find Barnum when you're already in the building, or you carry the campus map with you for the first month of school, or you accidentally go to Bromfield-Pearson instead of Eliot-Pearson. It happens to everyone, and honestly, I would embrace all the mistakes you make your first year because you'll learn SO much (also, it's a lot less embarrassing when you do these things as a freshman rather than as a junior...)
You'll eventually look back on your freshman year when you're a sentimental upperclassmen and remember how your best friends by forcing yourself to go to a club meeting by yourself or to sign up to do run crew for a play. So wear your Tufts lanyard like a badge of honor-- we've all been there, and come out on the other side (hopefully without our keys around our necks, but that's a personal preference). Now I still count down the days until Tufts over the summer, but stepping foot back on campus feels just like returning home.