You'll be OK

To be completely honest, I’m a little nervous. Don’t get me wrong – I'm also really excited to graduate and move on to the next big thing, but I’m also a little anxious because I don’t know what to expect postgraduation. It makes me wish that someone who has done this before would sit me down and tell me that everything is going to be OK.

I remember wishing that exact same thing when I was about to graduate high school. I just wanted someone to tell me all the answers to life in college and calm all of my worries. So if you’re reading this and you’re about to graduate high school, I’m here to tell you that everything will be just fine! Concordia College is an amazing place to call home.

You will make friends.

This was one of my main concerns coming to college. Will I make friends right away? Will I lose touch with my friends from high school? I was so worried that I was going to spend my days and nights cooped up in my dorm room because I didn’t have anyone to hang out with. And even if that did happen, will I be cooped up with a roommate I don’t like or doesn’t like me? The answers to these questions are both yes and no.

Yes, you will make friends right away, but it will take time until they really get to know you and rise to the “best friend” status. Yes, you might lose touch with some friends from high school, but I think you’ll find that the good ones end up sticking around and when you go home for breaks it will be like no time has passed.

No, you won’t be cooped up in your dorm room. Freshman year is filled with a lot of on-campus events, floor events, and schoolwork, so you’ll always be out and about on campus. However, sometimes you might choose to have a night in your dorm room and that’s fine! It’s good for your mental health to carve out some time to just be alone.

Now on to the roommate concerns. Some people end up being best friends with their freshman roommate. Some people end up liking their roommate just fine but don’t choose to hang out with them all the time. And, honestly, some people end up not liking their roommate. It happens. My roommate and I did not end up being best friends and our living styles were very different, but I still have fond memories of living with her and I made my BEST friends in college on my freshmen floor. To this day, I live with people that lived on my floor freshmen year. So no matter how your living situation ends up, it will be OK. And you will make friends.

You will have academic success.

First of all, you already must be smart because you’ve chosen to go to a small school where you are not just a number to the professors. All of my professors take the time to get to know me and truly care about my success in their classroom. I’ve always felt comfortable reaching out to my professors with questions in an email or after class and they are almost always eager to help me.

In addition to all of this individualized help from professors, there are also an abundance of resources on campus to aid in your academic success. The writing center is full of amazing tutors to help you perfect your papers in any subject, and there are peer mentors on campus that can give you study tips. Concordia wants each and every student to be successful and they back that up with a huge support system.

You won't even have a chance to miss home.

Concordia has breaks from classes about once a month, which breaks up the semester nicely but also provides a nice even dose of home to sustain you through the year. So if you’re ever feeling homesick and a phone call just won’t cut it, I guarantee that your countdown until the next break won’t be long. Eventually, your countdown will be “days until summer” and you’ll wish that you hadn’t been counting down the days so much because now your freshmen year is almost over. Before long, you’ll accidentally call Concordia “home” around your parents and your mom might cry. One day, you’ll be back in your hometown for a break and you’ll feel homesick for Concordia!

Long story short: You'll be OK.

I take that back; you will be MORE than OK. Before you know it, you will be in my shoes: graduating college in less than a month. You’ll be looking back on your time at Concordia and wondering where it all went and you’ll wish you would’ve cherished every up and every down you’ve had over the past four years even more.

Guest blog post by Kelsey Rausch ’16