Hello Everyone!
Welcome back to my blog. If you’re new here hello! I am so glad you are here:). Sincerely, TT is a blog I had created in the past year in the hopes of doing the two things I love most: writing and expressing my thoughts. This was first created with no intention of anyone ever viewing it and it was just meant for me but after a bunch of people asked me to make it public to the world, I did. So If you are subscribed to my blog thank you for doing so and if you haven’t, feel free to do so…. Or not I don’t care. I will have to apologize for how messy this post is gonna be because I don’t really know the best way to summarize these past two weeks without over-sharing/ making it boring. I do ramble a lot so bare with me on that and the messed up timeline.
But anyways, the last time I posted on here I was still at my house 3 days before moving into college. But now instead of writing in my queen bed at home, I am in a twin xl…. Not the greatest thing coming to college but I’ve grown to accept it.
I’ve only been at college for 16 days but it feels like I’ve been here for an eternity. A lot has happened these past 2 ish weeks and I think this is a good time to reflect on how college has been for me. I’m thinking about doing a blog post on college life every few months or so just because I know most people wanted it.
Now let’s get onto the real stuff.
I moved into The University of Minnesota on August 30th. Only 2 of my other friends (Shria and Caleb) moved in on the 30th while everyone else moved in the next day including my roommate. As you can guess the first day was very underwhelming since there wasn’t much happening. I live in Middlebrook Hall which is on the west bank and basically, all you need to know is that it's really far compared to the other residence halls. My roommate and I got screwed with that but eventually, it became my favorite place and I’ll explain that more in a second. But once I moved in my friends and I sat in my room and asked ourselves “What are we gonna do?” And to be honest I didn’t have the answer to that and we kinda sat there for a while and eventually had to go down to eat our first meal at the dining hall.
After that, we took the bus back to the east bank where their dorms were and looked around. Again with very limited options and people, we were very bored.
After hours of doing nothing, my friend Zoe, Her Roommate, and I then went back to our dorm and tried to meet new people. Coming from a really big friend group in high school and having most of them go to UMN, I knew that trying to branch out and find new people was very hard. I was so nervous but when I had gotten a notification on my floor group me from a guy that said people can come into their room to play Mario Kart, even with my anxiety, I impulsively went in…. By myself.
I don’t really know what happened to me that night and why I did that because usually, I am a pretty introverted person for the most part until I get comfortable, but clearly comfortable was the last thing I was feeling that entire day. But regardless I walked in and introduced myself to the two boys and I am so glad I did because I don’t know what would’ve happened if I never walked in those doors.
I always see these tik toks where they talk about little moments that changed their lives and this was one for me. So Joe and Blake, if you see somehow are reading this, thank you for offering up your room that day:)
My only plan that entire night was to introduce myself and leave but I couldn’t and eventually I stayed that entire night and more people had gone in so I wasn’t all alone. (Shoutout To Libby, thank you for being the other girl in the room for most of the night) But for a while, it was refreshing to have a normal conversation with someone going into college because I think many people get the wrong idea that once you get to college you must talk to as many people as possible- while this is true I can definitely tell you that not everyone I’ve talked to I’d consider as my friends. Most people come to talk to you for one day, just to make things not awkward, while true friends are the ones who continue to talk to you after it all.
So once that night had happened, I went back to my dorm and slept in there for the first time. It definitely felt bittersweet and even though I was only 20 minutes away, I missed my home a lot. But I knew that UMN was my new home so I had to accept the fact that I didn’t have the comfort of my own room, bathroom, and everything else at my disposal anymore.
I then woke up the next morning and my roommate was moving in (Hey Alyssa). It was so hectic but our room was finally starting to look decent. This day was super nice and relaxing and with all the new people coming in I got to meet everyone.
So after the hectic move-in days, Our school had a welcome week and I could only go for 2 days but they made us walk everywhere…. I got 20,000 steps on both those days and it was definitely interesting. I didn’t like most of the events except for pride and cheer and that was for us to go to the stadium and learn the football chants for the game the next day.
We played Ohio State for our first game and as you can expect we lost… but it was such a fun experience that it didn’t matter. It did start to rain and it got really cold real quick but it was so worth it. Although the walk back from the stadium to my dorm was NOT pleasant.
But anyway, none of the other events during welcome week were worth mentioning but the reason why I could only go to 2/7 days of welcome week was because I was rushing for a sorority…. Oh god, even bringing this up again I can feel the blisters on my feet from wearing heels, the constant stress, early mornings, and all the girls I’ve met that were crying.
I just wanted to formally apologize for making my rush week EVERYONE’S problem. I was so stressed and was constantly saying “I’m gonna drop it”…. I didn’t ahahahahaha.
So rush had started 2 days before move-in on zoom and then continued in person on September 3-5. I spent 2 in person days waking up super early and walking around in heels and fancy outfits and my legs and feet were KILLING ME. Especially all the walking during welcome week I was not in the right shape to go in heels but I did it anyway. Anyone who knows me knows I’m also not a morning person and the entire time Rush was happening I would wake up super early and was so stressed that I made myself “sick” and my Rho Alphas had to give me Advil.
But looking back at it all, I should’ve had more faith in the rush process because I shouldn’t have been as stressed as I was but at the time I was definitely not in the mood to listen to anyone. But I knew so many people around me were anticipating my decision because I really wouldn’t shut up about it.
I can’t go too in-depth about the rush process but as stressful and tiring as it was I was able to stick through it and rush Alpha Gamma Delta! I am so happy to have found a great place to be with so many amazing people and I got to meet so many new friends too!
The best part of rush was that during that week I had met 3 other girls in my dorm building who were rushing as well because we all ended up in a girl’s room who did tarot card readings and we all did love readings. Unfortunately for me, mine wasn’t anything good which was disappointing but it wasn’t anything I didn’t know before but that was when I met Tara, Maggie, and Adrianna. We all came back to my room and ranted the entire time about recruitment week and eventually, we all became close friends because of it! They have been the ones to make my college experience unforgettable. I say this because of them, I have random people coming up to me at random times wanting to be my friend. I always had a consistent friend group growing up during school years and to me having that type of appreciation makes me really happy. I love that people go out of their way to show that they care because the feeling is amazing… I feel so appreciated! Usually, I don’t like the attention but I’m feeling the love right now. Like the day before my first day of classes, I did a presentation on people who went to my high school and it was only meant to be for my roommate and I until an entire crowd came into my room. It was hilarious and I never finished it but one day I hope I will.
But besides that, once that was over my fun was squashed because I had classes starting up.
My first day of classes weren’t too bad besides my late math class that was 6-8 pm. But I only had 2 that day and I pushed through even tho I knew it wasn’t easy. As for the rest of the week, school got to be a little bit frustrating and stressful and it was only supposed to be syllabus week. I spent about a good chunk of that week stressing myself out and lots of crying. But I eventually told myself to suck it because I wasn’t the only one feeling that way and if others can do it, I can too… I think?
But luckily for me, I got Fridays off and I spent that Friday of the first school week doing laundry, cleaning around, and buying school supplies. But that’s not the fun stuff. On that Friday I also had Black Friday which was a thing the greek life kids had where it was the first time the sororities were able to go to Frats and so we all wore black. I don’t know how much of this I’m even allowed to say but it was a very fun night for me and everyone else! I had to leave my sorority sisters halfway and spent the rest of the night with a friend and it was hard to get him in the frats but it wasn’t all bad. Very hectic night but it’s one I’ll never forget and easily some of the funniest moments ever.
I also got to talk to a girl I use to go to high school with and her roommate who both went to St Thomas and we really bonded since we never really spoke in high school.
But once that was over Saturday had gone by and I had about 4 hours of sleep because our football game against Miami Ohio was at 11 AM and gates opened at 9:30 and my friends and I wanted to get good seats so we went super early and I was so tired from the previous night that I literally could not go out. I felt like I was gonna pass out from exhaustion but this was the game that my best friend came to! She’s only a senior in high school... what a loser but at least she got to come. (Maia if you’re reading this screw you) but anyways, we went to bdubs because we left halfway and it was SO good. ALSO, I’m just saying this because I felt like it needed to be mentioned but bone-in wings are better than boneless. Then I had spent the remainder of my day with Maia and Cooper and so I couldn’t go nap or anything but I was SO exhausted.
Later that night I told all my friends that I wasn’t doing anything until somehow I got up and got dressed to go out again. The nightlife was dead on that Saturday so I ended up at the University of St Thomas and that did not end the way I wanted to but it was okay, it was a learning experience.
The next morning I woke up at 9 am and fell asleep and woke up 4 times until it was 2:30 and a friend had to come in to wake me up. It didn’t work unfortunately because I fell back asleep and I knew that my sleep schedule was FUCKED.
I had never been so tired in my entire life and trust me I’ve pulled 2 all-nighters before and even that didn’t feel so bad at the time. But once that had happened we now end up here at our second week of school. Obviously, school hasn’t gotten any easier, it definitely got worse but I’ve been so on top of doing all my homework and such so I’ve been able to rest and relax.
Time management is a very big thing in college and while I had always been good with it, I wasn’t used to this new transition going into college but now that I have a stable routine, I am glad to finally have some sort of peace in my life again.
In conclusion, my first 2 weeks of college have been nothing but eventful. I've had very rough moments but the good ones outweighed that. I always considered myself to be a lucky person and once I got Middlebrook Hall I was so disappointed and wondered what went wrong but in reality, it was actually the best thing to happen to me. I’ve met so many people and made so many friends that I can’t even count. I love the community we have over here and that to me is more important than anything else. It sucks to be so far away from my high school friends but maybe the change was good because it forced me to branch out.
I honestly still suffer wondering if this was all worth it but honestly I think it is. No matter how rough it gets it always gets better. I told myself once I got into college I’d stop being so tough on myself and stop crying so much and I’d like to think I did a pretty good job of trying not to but then again it still has happened a bit more than I wanted it to so hopefully I’ll try harder with that because crying in front of people is so embarrassing….
But anyways, Thank you UMN for the unforgettable memories these past 2 weeks, shoutout to floor 4 of Middlebrook, the chipotle runs, the Coffman study areas, the ADG house, the early class dismissals, and my lovely friends who’ve been a part of it with me.
- Sincerely, TT
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