Dear Freshman Me - Michelle F.
Dear freshman year me,
I know what you’re thinking. I know it’s easy to stay in your room, and it’s comfortable to be alone. I know it feels safe, and it feels good in the moment to evade your responsibilities and escape into fiction and media. But there’s so much more to life.
You won’t feel it, but time will go by so fast. Stop putting things off. The things you keep saying you want to learn: actually do them and stop just wishing for something to change. Join the sound team, keep editing videos, buy a keyboard, get a job. All that time you have right now -- it doesn’t last.
Also, find places to relax and reflect. Find a spot where you can sit and just think, or read: the top floor of Chou Hall in the early morning, or the Campanile at night, a refuge from the busyness of Berkeley. Learn how to journal and how to ask for help and how to rely on others when you need to. Be more sincere in your search for purpose and God and commit to it rather than living with one foot in the door.
Go out and discover more of the world, but don’t do it all alone. Bring peers along for the fellowship. Stop it with all those walls, and really put in the effort to have more meaningful relationships. Stop worrying about how to be a friend, and just be a friend. Be there for people, and don’t be afraid to care about them — and if you mess up, apologize, fix it if you can, and try again.
I know you. I know you’re scared.
But it’s so much better when you step out. Your life will become so much more full: full of laughter, full of doing silly things with your roommates, full of people willing to walk through the rain for you because you forgot your umbrella, full of late night talks, full of feeling understood, full of being heard, full of music and reading buddies, full of understanding, full of the knowledge that you’re anchored by something deeper, full of feeling loved.
Trust me. I was you. It will all be worth it.
Sincerely,
Michelle