Recently, one of my best friends from high school visited me from Virginia Tech. We grabbed dinner with mutual friends and went out to the Corner so she could experience the night scene. After returning home Friday night, we hung out in our friend’s dorm room. Although we all talked throughout the entire day, we didn’t really have the chance to discuss what’s been going on in our lives and how things are different in college. We stayed up until four in the morning catching up on each other’s personal lives and how our perception of college has changed during the span of our first year as college students.
During our late-night conversation, my friend shared her expectations for college before attending and how they have changed. She planned to attend a college in a city, but has now fallen in love with the college-town feel that Charlottesville provides. For me, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had hoped it’d be like in the movies, where I would become best friends with my roommate and hallmates, have spontaneous and outrageous antics and discover my passion, but reality has sunk in slowly as I spend long nights in the library, eat in the dining halls alone and constantly debate whether to live in the moment or prepare myself for the future. High school was only a basic tutorial for some of these challenges.
As the night progressed, my two friends shared similar feelings regarding the shallow relationships based on comfort and proximity. I can walk down a sidewalk and say “hi” or “how’s it going?” to multiple people, but I have started to feel spread too thin by the number of friends I attempt to keep in touch with. In a heartless and corporate manner, I resort to writing a list of people to squeeze into my schedule just to check them off like objects on a to-do list. It both pains and excites me that I constantly see new faces everywhere at U.Va., unlike the sea of familiar faces I saw in halls and classes of my high school.
As my first year is coming to a close, I have begun to reflect upon how I would do first year differently and what I want to change for my second year. Initially, it seems as if many doors are closing. I felt the title of “first-year” has given me leeway to do whatever I wanted with as much or as little commitment as possible. The label has also made me a fortunate target for upperclassmen to persuade me to join their clubs and try to mold me. Being stripped of the benefits awarded to a first-year scares me and makes me jealous of all of the new incoming first years. Change is intimidating, and I don’t know if I am excited for my second year.
So many upperclassmen tell me their later years were much better than their first year, but I’m going to miss the newness of everything that came with first year. I’m melancholy as I recall many of my “first memories” such as exploring the maze that is Newcomb, hanging out in a Lawn room for the first time, seeing the Sons and Daughters of Liberty running through the libraries — unaware it was TJ’s birthday — and mumbling the words to the Good Old Song at my first football game. Although I am sad I won’t be able to experience many things for the first time again, my few yet amazing fourth-year role models have taught me that there is still so much one can experience even as a fourth year. I finally appreciate and have grown fond of TJ’s quote about the “illimitable freedom of the human mind” as encouragement to experience many more firsts and adapt to changes as my second year approaches hastily and inevitably.
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