FECTEAU: Acclimating to college culture a tough transition, but worth it

• Tweet
• 

The transition from feeling on top of the world as a high school senior to being a freshman in college is one of the hardest things I have ever experienced.

After countless fights with my dad over attending community college versus a four-year university, I made the decision simple by signing over $800 from my checking account to my first dorm payment at CMU.

It was just the start of my decisions as an adult.

I first found out how hard it can be to live on your own in a square box, or residence hall.

For the first month or two of being greeted at the door by grumpy roommates instead of my dog excitedly jumping all over me, I regretted going away to college. I spent more days figuring out what credits could transfer to a community school than I did trying to figure out my math homework.

I wondered what I was going to do with my life as I sat on my bed spooning through yet another jar of crunchy peanut butter and consequently gained the “freshman 15.”

I found out what this whole “party school” thing was my aunts and uncles told me about.

I did my time at the library and explored all the random places you don’t see on the orientation campus tour.

It seems like I changed my major every day in my first semester.

I majored in psychology until I remembered I have no patience, pondered something in the medical field until I decided it was too much science for my liking and thought about education until a kindergartner made fun of my laugh.

But what to major in is not the only thing I learned from driving 150 miles north to start my life over.

It wasn’t until Winter break that I really decided that sending that check to CMU in May was the right decision.

At home I showed off to my mom that I knew how to do my own laundry and impressed my dad by telling him how much money I saved from not driving to community college every day. He loved that one.

Funny as it sounds, I even started taking the initiative to make my own doctor and dentist appointments without telling the office lady, “I’ll have my mom call.”

Going away to school is really a life changing experience. It takes the freshman awkwardness right out of you and makes you immediately start making decisions on your own.

Overall, I feel like I grew into a new person. Maybe this is what that thing called adulthood is all about.