OPINION: College has made change feel way less abstract. There is no shortage of opportunities to compare who you were at the beginning of this journey with who you are becoming. It is a series of small goodbyes each asking you to become more comfortable with uncertainty and more certain that you can handle what comes next.
Growth can and will feel like loss. All those aforementioned endings are disguised as ordinary transitions. You lose structure, can’t find familiar patterns and realize that certain relationships won’t follow you forever. Initially, these things feel like loss. Any transitional season shows that change isn’t always easy, beautiful or something to be immediately grateful for. They do, however, remind us that change is necessary and natural.
Every fall, the trees let go. They visibly shed a part of themselves in preparation for a new chapter. We don’t interpret them losing parts of themselves as becoming less whole. They make room for another season and become what that season requires. We should apply this same principle to ourselves. College is full of unexpected changes that require proving over and over that familiarity is temporary. It shows us that belonging does not depend on permanence. Every year we get a physical, visible reminder that endings don’t have to be negative.
College has given me a relationship with myself that I didn’t have before. Being away from any previous structure made me figure out what I actually liked, wanted and valued. It challenged me to take a new stance on my self image. I became more comfortable doing things alone, sitting with myself and making decisions without looking for reassurance. Part of navigating these years is becoming comfortable with and knowing the person who is already there.
Knowing yourself won’t inherently make the change around you any more comfortable, though. When you have a clear understanding of who you are and what you want, it can actually make that discomfort harder to ignore. There are moments when you know something is changing before you know what comes next. I’ve had to learn that discomfort isn’t a signal to turn around. In these moments you’ll grow resilience. Being able to sit in the uncertainty, let something hurt and continue moving forward is one of the best skills you can adopt when experiencing change.
The only constant is change. This is the only cheesy quote I’ll include. It’s overused for a reason. Every year we are given a physical reminder of it as seasons change without asking permission. What disappears in one season makes room for what comes in the next. Friendships, routines, places, plans and versions of ourselves that felt so permanent don’t have to follow us into a new season.
During these years we don’t always get to choose what ends, but we can choose whether we see the ending as something that has been taken from us.
