<p>For the traditional student, it's just about halfway between high school and college. I thought I'd share a few things. By no means are they universally relevant, but for some, they may be interesting to read or to keep in mind.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Your summer-after-high-school fling is either in progress or impending. You're confusing lust with love and trying to ground yourself in that advice someone, somewhere had to have given you about breaking off romantically-inclined relationships before college. Unfortunately, you'll forget this when it matters, and things will, more than likely, get weird. You're not the first one, though, and one day, it will be a common experience that bonds you to others. After all, you're Taylor Swift and "miserable and magical at the same time" becomes the best nostalgia you'll have in a few years.</p></li>
<li><p>Your acne isn't going anywhere. You've been applying Proactiv since you were 12. It doesn't know that now you're 18 and going to college and in the aforementioned fling with the person you are definitely going to totally marry. It would be a convenient exit for the blemishes, but just like it would have been nice of you to get out of that little relationship in one, your acne's going to linger a little while longer. There's no magic moment at 18. Or 19. Or 20. Or 21. Or 22. Go for a "best eight years of your life" experience and maybe, by the end of it, you will have figured out that stressing out about your breakouts actually causes more breakouts.</p></li>
<li><p>Then again, your acne isn't as bad as you think it is.</p></li>
<li><p>You can have a social life without drinking or going to parties. You never make it if you fake it. Don't feel like you have to do what you don't want to do just to impress people who don't actually like you and who you don't actually like. There will be a honeymoon period of "OH MY GOSH ALL THIS ALCOHOL." It will pass. At some point, the people who drink and the people who do not drink both get over their own self-isolation from the others and become friends who each accommodate the other in different situations. I promise.</p></li>
<li><p>Read that again, though. Both groups become friends. Don't carry an attitude that people who drink are "screwing up" or "going to get in trouble" or aren't "serious students." Don't carry an attitude that people who don't drink are "no fun" or "take themselves too seriously." You all have a lot to learn from each other, and you all have different experiences you can share with each other. I don't drink; the best friends I have all do. It's not an issue because none of us hold weird attitudes about the other.</p></li>
<li><p>You can commute and have friends. In commuting, you lose the spontaneity and natural flow of people that you get in a dorm. There are fewer opportunities to "get out there," so you just have to make sure you don't miss any of the opportunities that do exist for you. The time before/after class should be used for conversation. Talking about the class/homework is fine, but try to expand from that. There's an art to using conversation as a launching point to "let's get lunch" or "oh, tonight we're doing this." "I hate this class, I don't understand, I didn't do the homework" is not that launching point.</p></li>
<li><p>You can live in a dorm and have no friends. Dorms don't make friends for you. They surround you with people who have common needs and give you all the access in the world to every kind of social resource your campus offers. You still have to go out and take advantage of that. Stick with it. The early days are important. You need to be out there in the common area on the first night, and you need to budget your time to be free at key moments.</p></li>
<li><p>These magical people who tell everyone the best way to making friends is to start conversation are most likely regretful graduates, not current students. No one has ever done this in my experience to anyone. Not to me, not to my friends, not to people I saw across the dining hall. In their own insecurity, people stay on their iPhones or whatever popular device they have. Why? Approaching someone is a sign of weakness! Clearly, you wouldn't approach a stranger if you had any friends, so of course you aren't going to do that. And so you all sit alone in your misery thinking everyone else has friends even though every table in the dining hall is occupied by a total of one person each. Break that cycle. Talk to someone!</p></li>
<li><p>You can be positive. You don't need to hate your professors, your coursework, your major, your dorm, the food, etc. Your happiness impacts others. Create a better environment be being better. They aren't the best four (or five or six) years of your life if you don't let them be. So many people hold a negative view on everything, and then wonder why they didn't have the same college experience their friends did. The barrier to enjoying college is the attitude you have and the attitudes of those around you. Go in open-minded, and make the most out of what's there. You finally have a say in fixing things. Blame is tough to take, but in having blame, you also gain the control to solve your problems.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That's all. Like I said, not universal. Long post, I know. I felt reflective today on my own experience, and wondered if any of it would translate to you guys.</p>
<p>Good luck, be well, enjoy the last two months! :)</p>