Since I'm about to begin my second semester up at Texas State, I wanted to take the time to give you a little insight on my first semester. In the words of Kylie Jenner, this was the year/semester of realizing things...

So coming out of my first four or so months of college I have realized three things about college:

1. I overestimated the academic side.

2. I underestimated the social side.

3. It is a bad idea for you and your gal pal to go to 6th Street alone.

I HIGHLY recommend investing in a planner. This thing was my saving grace. Seriously, I penciled in everything from exams to days when my favorite brand of socks were having a sale. You know, the necessities.

1.

I don't really know what I was expecting as far as the academic side of college, but it honestly wasn't that bad. As long as you just go to class and read the textbook pages (which are outrageously expensive I mean honestly I paid like $50 for this tiny book that could have been summed up in "The definition of literature is subjective, now go ahead and close this book and google any topic your professor talks about and you'll do fine on the essays.") that you're assigned, then you actually do pretty well. Also, some people will say classes weren't hard for me because I'm an English major, but I'll talk to those people once they write a 5 page essay critically analyzing the instruction manual for their coffee maker. LMAO yeah that was actually an assignment I had.

I got wrecked during finals. I was convinced God was giving me the finger that week. Friday morning I started writing my story for my creative writing final and I finished it late Saturday night. 11 pages. Microsoft Word crashed while I was proofreading it. LOL yeah so I'm sitting there like chill, Em you're good. Autosave has you covered. NOPE. Autosave had my back in the same way some of my old "friends" did...not at all.

The whole file was lost and I think I spent a solid 15 minutes sobbing at my desk in the dorm, but it was more like that really pathetic silent cry because my roommate was sleeping a couple of feet away in her bed. Hands shaking in rage and eyes bloodshot, I made myself another pot of coffee and spent that night and all of Sunday rewriting my story so I could turn it in on Monday morning.

AND AS IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH, that Tuesday I woke up for my 8 AM final...at 8:05. Now, I'm not one for believing in the impossible, but let me just say I FLEW out of bed (which is roughly 5 feet off the ground) and was out of the dorm in no more than 20 seconds. Sprinting to my final, still in my adorable flannel pajama pants, pencil in one hand and student ID in the other, all I could think about was how my mom and dad were going to kill me and how I was going to spend my whole life begging for money on the street corner because I flunked political science.

You know those really dramatic scenes in the movies where someone bursts through some great big doors into a quiet room of like 300 people and everyone stops what they're doing and looks at you? Well that's exactly what happened to me. For the first time in my life, I didn't give a flying frick about who was looking at me. I ran to my TA and between breaths asked/begged if I could still take the final. That man, that beautiful bearded man, handed me my scantron and told me I was allowed to take it. Thank you Sergio, I will cherish you always.

(The little cherry on top of this story is that the guy sitting six people down from me during this final brought his kitten with him. Yeah, you read that right. This dude straight up had a cat in his lap while he took his test.)

2.

Up until my sophomore year of high school I didn't leave my seat at the table once during lunch. Why? I was under this feeling of paranoia that everyone would be looking at me if I got up. Do you know how many lunches went by when I used a fork to eat yogurt or sat there chewing a giant piece of meat off bit by bit on my fork like some sort of savage because I was too nervous to just walk over to the cafeteria line and get plastic wear? The answer to that question is too pathetic to include in this post.

Somewhere at the end of Sophomore year I really pulled myself together (not really). I don't really know how I did it, so it kills me that I can't offer some sort of uplifting advice. In all honesty, I think I just realized "Hmm you know I think people already think I'm weird so I might as well just do whatever I want at this point." and thus a new Emily was born.

But what I didn't realize was Old Emily (I'll stop talking in third person now) wanted to make an encore performance for the freshman year of college.

The thing about college that's different from high school is the amount of independence that you are granted and with that came the responsibility for, you know, your mental health and stuff.

Look, i'm great at making my own meals and making sure I get to class (most of the time) but the one place where I falter is getting myself out in the world to socialize. I realized this was an issue when I went home for the first time in September and people kept asking me things like "So have you made tons of new friends or what?" yeah, uh, I definitely fell more on the "or what" side of that question. (I also learned that laughing nervously in response to this question isn't socially acceptable.)

Back at home, I spent most of the day in my room reading, writing, sleeping, or just sitting on my bed surfing the web for pictures of labrador retrievers. I like to be alone. There is a running joke in my family about how I never leave my room, but now it's more pathetic than funny. That was the norm for me at home, so it was no surprise that dorm life would be the same. In other news, I now consider myself a double major; one in English and one in Netflix.

My roommate did the same thing as me for awhile, but soon enough she had joined a sorority and was out with her sisters most days of the week. One night I pulled up my university's club page and picked out several groups I wanted to try out; a couple creative writing clubs and a Republican club (sorry if you just cringed but also I'm not sorry). That Tuesday was the first meeting for one of the creative writing clubs and about an hour before the meeting I was like "Mmmmmmmm I'll skip this one...next week...next week I'll go." And yep, you guessed it, I did that every single week for the rest of the semester.

If you want any sort of happy ending for this note I can only say that I made two really great friends in my creative writing class and I've actually managed to keep in touch with them. We're all hitting up Starbucks when we get back in town to talk about books and The Silence of the Lambs. (great combo huh)

Jillian and Emily, two very talented writers who endured countless workshops with me in creative writing where our work was torn apart by other ameaturs like ourselves.

3.

Ah yes, 6th street. If you've been to 6th street (it's in Austin) you're probably thinking to yourself about how utterly stupid I am and, I mean, you're not wrong.

Me and my bff, Sarah, decided to check it out for ourselves for the first time. Not even one minute spent there when a skinny old man wearing no shirt, booty shorts, and white tube socks rollerbladed past us and pointed out how white my thighs are. I wish I could say that was the weirdest thing that happened that night but alas I witnessed many fights between the drunk population and club bouncers, men and women wearing almost no clothing, and one VERY drunk birthday girl getting dragged into a tattoo parlor by her friends. I instantly said a silent prayer for that poor woman, something along the lines of "Hey God, please don't let this girl's friends talk her into getting a Hello Kitty tramp stamp. Thank you. Also, please let me make it out of here alive."

After fulfilling our previously made commitment of walking the whole street once, we began our trek back to our car which we had brilliantly decided to park in the sketchiest lot ever underneath the highway. Quickening our pace as we realized we had screwed up, we noticed this homeless man hanging out on the street corner. I'm tryna stay cool, telling myself not to be so freaked out he's just a human I'm a human have more compassion he's a good man who just has it bad and hES RUNNING TOWARDS US AND IM FREAKING THE FRICK OUT AND SARAH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD RUN FASTER I DON'T WANT TO DIE NOT TODAY SATAN and before we know it we're in the car and the homeless man is standing in the headlights. Sarah threw that car in reverse with so much force we scarcely missed the couple walking towards the street as we plowed back towards San Marcos.

Wild night.

(Also, I didn't have a picture to add to this section because to be fair I was more worried about my life than my aesthetic)

I learned and realized a lot in the Fall of 2016, these were just the three the came to mind first and didn't contain anything illegal. Kylie Jenner was right. (wait did I really just type that out?)

If you stuck through and read this long post from start to finish then I congratulate you, I am truly impressed. Have you considered a major in English?

This is my life, stay tuned to see what's up next.