What People Don’t Tell You About Being a Freshman

As someone who started college in one of the most unprecedented and unpredictable times of the last 50 years, I feel like I can speak fairly well to the struggles of my friends facing their freshman year of college. In order to capture the heart of this blog post, let me start by sharing the understatement of the century: freshman year is hard. However, I feel confident I can offer some encouragement since I’m alive and writing this to you now as a senior who is almost finished with her time at MSU. There was once (or many...) a time during the start of college where I thought the sun wouldn’t come up the next day, let alone did I think I’d make it through freshman year. Now looking back three years later, I can see not only how the Lord helped me overcome the fears and obstacles that once paralyzed me, but I can also attest to how you, too, can experience the fullness of college if you let yourself struggle through it.

In order to prove that I fully understand where you’re at, let me take you back to my freshman year for a brief second. It’s August of 2020, and the world is just opening back up to the way it once was, only with one small change- almost nothing is the way it once was. (I know- you’re probably sick of hearing your friends just a few years older than you beating a dead horse about a pandemic that we all experienced, but I just want you to know that if I can do it, you are more than capable :). Without sugar-coating it, the first semester was pretty much a nightmare. I spent freshman orientation sitting inside on a screen for eight hours while my family was on vacation, New Maroon Camp was canceled, rush was online, I had a singular face-to-face class the whole semester, and I couldn’t tell what anyone actually looked like because half their face was covered in a mask. Basically everything I’d planned on to meet people within my first days at

Mississippi State was no longer an option, and the year would turn out nothing like I’d expected.

Being an out-of-state student, not only did I not know how to get anywhere, but I also didn’t know who anyone was. Of the few events that did happen to be going on, I wasn’t invited. I longed to go home constantly. I dreaded getting on social media because I knew I’d just see acquaintances out with their friends that I didn’t yet have. I spent weekends in my dorm room alone, sitting in the weight of my fear, loneliness, and lack of belonging. I was utterly overwhelmed, and I started to question whether I’d made the right choice in coming to Mississippi State at all. Does any of this feel familiar to you?

Fortunately, I can guarantee you that not only I can empathize with you in your trenches, but so can every other person that’s been a first-time college student. I can also guarantee you that nothing is ever what it seems. Your head will always want to make you feel like you’re the only one, you’re messing it up, you don’t belong, etc., but here’s what I believe isn’t emphasized enough: being a beginner is difficult, and college is one of the most abrupt beginnings anyone can face. And worse yet, there’s no one to bring you gently into it; you’re thrown to the wolves without a clue where to start. Even though you’re 18 or so years into life, entering a new season, especially one where you’re in (most cases) a different town or state, without your parents, and making your own choices for the first time, is more than a challenge. Of course you don’t know how to navigate it fully yet!

This is where I believe some of the most important “G” words come into play that can help guide you through the challenges: grace and growth. Grace, by definition, is giving someone something they don’t deserve. Not only has my Savior done this for me,

and is the reason I’m capable of writing this message to you today, but this is also what we’re called to extend to others. I know you’ve heard the saying “treat others how you want to be treated,” but how can we fully live this out if we don’t practice giving it to ourselves first? This lesson may be harder for some than others; as an extremely type-A perfectionist myself, grace is the last thing I feel willing to give myself when I feel like no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get it right. But friend, let me tell you that this is an exhausting, unrealistic, and unsustainable way to live. If we know we’re a beginner, we should have comfort in knowing that we probably won’t get it right at first. However, this is where the beauty of growth comes in.

When we finally let go of our pride, insecurities, and self-doubt, and offer the grace to ourselves that we may so naturally give to others, we allow ourselves to live in the freedom of a growth-oriented mindset. This is what changes our thoughts from the toxic cycle of “I’m a failure because (fill in the blank),” to “This is hard right now, but I’m learning and growing my character along the way.” Something that’s taken me 21+ years to learn is that so much of life isn’t defined by what organizations we’re in, what grades we make, how many followers we have, or what job we find ourselves in, but who we become in the process of it all. When we’re constantly in a state of growing in mind, body, and spirit towards others and being gracious to ourselves, that’s how we know we’ve made it. Our lives won’t end up looking like a straight path of perfection, but they will be a reflection of the grace that our Lord so kindly gives us each day.

I recently heard Lisa Harper share on a podcast that “Women are not impressed with what you got right, but with where you got it wrong and God rescued you.” When you open your heart to the fulfilling and life-giving mindset of grace and growth, the things that once defined you as a failure (in whatever way that looks like to you) can

turn into a testimony of relatability, integrity, and strength. The Lord will end up writing a story of your life that’s so much better than what you could imagine if you just let Him be the author. Let yourself cry, share your heart with others, challenge yourself to keep going, but do it all with Him. You really are never alone, even when that feels like the farthest thing from the truth. I know it might not feel like it right now, but to be able to truly appreciate where you’ll be in just a few short years, you must sit in the hard of now and allow yourself grace as you stumble through it. I promise, it goes by with the blink of an eye, and before you know it you’ll be in my shoes telling your own freshman friends that they’re going to be just fine. ;)

XO,
Molly Carter

Morgan