By Sadie Barend
Welcome back to Life After North! As I enter the second semester of my freshman year of college I can’t help but reflect on how far I’ve come from where I was last year. Well, technically it’s not that far, just 40 minutes up 495. Regardless, the purpose of this article is to prove to you, upperclassmen, that things miraculously do get better — I promise.
The things I wish I could tell senior year me, along with some advice.
Please forgive me when I say this, but you will never need to learn about the Mongol Empire again, so put down that massive AP World History textbook you’ve been carrying around in your bag all day (it’s probably the reason you have onset arthritis at 18) and listen up.
You know those ads you always see on TikTok for that one meditation app that’s supposedly meant to cure anxiety in five minutes — yeah you should get that. While you’re at it, just order the whole full year subscription. Then, you don’t have to set 15 reminders on your Google Calendar to cancel the trial run. Plus, you’ll need it because in the next few months you will enter what can only be defined as an emotional rollercoaster
Also, that dream dorm room Pinterest board you spent hours curating, yeah I can confidently say my lofted triple does not look anything like those photos. Instead, you should spend your time applying for an internship for the summer of 2028.
Although the work never truly ends, I encourage you to stop obsessing over your grades. I promise the grade on your trigonometry exam will be the definitive factor in your college decisions. Though in retrospect I probably should have paid better attention in class because now I’m struggling though my general math core. All I recall is the Pythagorean Theorem — that’s it. I have no clue what the term means, just simply the name. So, yes, I am struggling.
Honestly, I spent countless hours stressing over such miniscule things. For your enjoyment, and my displeasure, here is a list of the five worst moments from my senior year of high school.
—When I was paranoid for a month that I spelled Boston College as Bistin Collage on my college application. I’m still unsure if I did, and it does keep me up at night.
—During my French final exam I mistakenly said “Ma maison est une grenouille” (My house is a frog). Let’s just say my teacher was quite baffled and my grade accurately reflected her confusion.
—In the middle of a college interview on Zoom the power shut off and I’m nearly certain I had a heart attack.
—The night before my poetry presentation for AP Lit our basement flooded, so in the midst of trekking buckets of water outside, I tried to memorize the script in my head.
—After a week of field hockey tryouts I had to wake up before the sun rose just to drive two hours away to take the SAT. Spoiler: it was not worth it.
With all that being said, remember that the small things you worry about are nothing but memories a year later. So to all the upperclassmen stressed about college, I can guarantee you it will work out — well I guess I can’t guarantee anything; I mean, it could all be a disaster. It probably won’t, maybe.
Thank you for joining me for this month’s edition of “Life After North” and I’ll see you next month.
