Home by Abigail

Home by Abigail - April 2016 Scholarship Essay

College can seem like a very scary thing. For the first time, you’re living without your parents. Your classes are likely in different buildings, maybe even on opposite sides of a campus. You’re going to be living with people you’ve probably never met before for an entire year. It’s a little nerve-racking, to be sure.
I felt like vomiting when my parents pulled the van into the parking lot on move-in day. I was starting to second-guess this whole “college” thing. Maybe I could just stay home and go to community college. Maybe I could just work a minimum wage job for the rest of my life. But it was too late for those second thoughts. My bags were getting pulled out of the van, carried by baseball players and track runners up three flights of stairs to my room. That’s when I first met two of the three girls I’d be rooming with for the next eight or nine months.
I don’t think I’ve ever been filled with as much anxious energy as I had at that point. A part of me felt like exploding out, spilling everything about myself to my roommates, just to get it over with. Another part curled in on itself, worried that they wouldn’t like me, more worried that I wouldn’t like them.
I ended up shutting myself off to them. While my parents were still at the school, I talked to them alone. I would talk to my mom, and if I’d had an idea about the room set-up, she would announce it to the room. “Why don’t we put the dressers between the desks?” I unpacked my things in silence. I ate my meals without saying a word.
If I had to tell someone new to college any one bit of advice, it would be this. Don’t do what I did. Because I pulled away from my roommates, they did the same. I don’t think I had a real conversation with any of them until about two weeks after we moved in. I was more homesick and lonely during those two weeks than I thought I could handle. However, since I made friends with my roommates, since I learned to actually talk to them, I feel like I might have a second home here.
College may seem terrifying, but don’t be too scared. It may take a couple of weeks, a few months, or even most of the year, but eventually, your college could feel like home.