In their 2008 song “Coffee’s For Closers,” Fall Out Boy’s frontman Patrick Stump once said, “change will come.” Although he was personally referencing how people stopped believing in the goodwill of man and the ability to change the world in the ‘90s, the lyric also applies to the four years that college students go through while transforming from freshman to seniors.
Most people walk into their freshman year of college with expectations of only expanding their minds academically. However, college is more of a large transition filled with a domino effect of numerous life lessons.
These learning experiences may hit as soon as the first few months of one’s freshman year. Little did I know that would end up being the case for myself.
To my advantage, I walked into my first day at Cabrini alongside my very best friend. Rooming with her and another girl from our hometown made my first few weeks of college fairly easy.
From classes, to making new friends and scoping out what there was to do on the weekends, my best friend and I went through all of the beginning stages of college together. I taught her how to do laundry and watched her get her first real job at the King of Prussia mall. She taught me how to not fall into the trap of college boys and focus more on myself and what was really important.
That all didn’t last for long though. By November of my freshman year, my best friend decided she wanted to seek out an opportunity to work in Disney World, and my other roommate felt that she would be happier commuting as to living in a dorm.
Of course I supported both of them. How could I not? That left myself as the only person in our room for three at the end of my first semester though. By that point, I knew that college would be a constant roller coaster of change that I had to mentally prepare to get back onto after Christmas break.
While I was initially a bit nervous to walk into my second semester as independently as I had to, it did not take long for me to learn how beneficial that sense of independence would end up being for the rest of my college career.
Not only did I get along wonderfully with my new roommate, I began to enjoy my classes much more and truly push myself in all of my academic endeavors. I made new friends, joined new clubs and achieved things that I initially did think were possible.
By embracing my own independence, I gained more confidence and wrote a front page Loquitur story, connected with an iHeartMedia employee about photographing Radio 104.5 concerts over the summer, and picked up a job as a photographer for Cabrini’s Alumni and Marketing offices.
Whenever opportunities came knocking, I learned that I should always say yes. This lead not only my education to grow, but also allowed myself to closely reach my fullest potential as freshman at Cabrini.
In comparison to myself, college has also taught many other students life lessons that do not necessarily correlate back to academics.
“Within my first few months at Cabrini, one of the first life lessons that I learned is that it’s better for myself to life with a stranger than with a friend,” sophomore business management major Trent Vernon said.
After going through multiple roommates in Woodcrest Hall during his first semester of his freshman year, Vernon decided to commute for his second semester, then move back on campus for his sophomore year. There is no question that Trent learned that in college, change will come.
Other students such as sophomore business administration major Matt Keelan have taken away more simple life lessons away from college so far.
“In college, you’ll meet someone new every single day,” Keelan said. “So I think it’s just important to make lots of friends and always be open to meeting new people. Continuously put yourself out there and make lots of connections, because you’ll never know when you’re going to need it.”
Not being afraid to branch out and make new friends is a lesson that Keelan and I both learned early on. However, sophomore sociology and criminology major Anna Russo makes a good point when it comes to balancing all of those friends and one’s personal life.
“One thing that I’ve learned with friends is that you don’t have to hang out with each other all the time to be friends,” Russo said. “In high school we have a lot more free time. But in college, when you have friends in different majors and that do different activities, you might only see each other once or twice a week. Only now, we’re mature enough to realize that we have our own lives and that we can still be friends regardless.”
Although college students obtain a lot of information from professors, textbooks, and powerpoint presentations, I believe that the most valuable takeaways over their four years come from within themselves.
