Monday marks the first day of classes at UNC, and I’m thinking of the freshmen in particular. Forget butterflies: the excitement and nerves in my belly on my first day were like a Molotov cocktail.
My advice to freshmen is to go to the activities fair. There is always free food. Most likely, you will find a club or group that you will want to join. Your social life deepens when you engage others face-to-face rather than online. (Does that make me sound like a fuddy-duddy, even more than the fact that I just wrote “fuddy-duddy”?) A friend had never rowed a boat, but he happened to attend an interest meeting for the UNC crew club. He was hooked for the next four years and still keeps in touch with the guys who went from oarsmen to groomsmen in his wedding. At a freshman orientation event, I met a young woman whose baby I would baptize 26 years later. She and I would have never believed that was possible when we were playing Chubby Bunny.
You may or may not know your major. You may or may not stick with your original choice of study. A freshman at Stanford joined the student newspaper on a whim. That former computer science major has just published a best-seller and was a guest on The Daily Show. One of my college roommates was pre-med. He now owns and runs a gymnastic training center for youth and has stories worthy of comedy television. I dated a nursing student who ended up becoming an elementary school teacher. She and I thought we were headed into the future together but things change.
Trust the process. You learn from failure by remembering that you are not a failure. I didn’t meet my wife until she was a Tar Heel alum. By then, I’d learned more about myself, including what I valued in a partner. I was also able to grow a beard, which she found adorable.
Life is full of trials and errors, even heartbreak, yet things have a way of working out. Stay open to possibilities and trust your gut. And if your stomach is rumbling, go find a campus ministry. They will feed you.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you
can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
