Things I'd Say to Freshman-Me

Hello hello hello, friends! It's the first list post of the school year — took me long enough, I know. If you found my blog through the blog tour back in August and are therefore new here, welcome! If you're a regular, good to see you again.

Anyway. In honor of the fact that this is, as I said, the first non-Doings! post of the school year and the fact that it is both my last year and my sister's first year, I have decided to share five things that I wish I could've said to freshman-me. A little cliche? Yeah. But I'm going for it anyway.

Things I'd Say to Freshman-Me

1. You never know which friends will stick. I remember having lunch with a particular girl and coming away from it thinking "I like this person! I hope we get to hang out again; we could be really good friends!" I'm pretty sure I've talked to her less than a dozen times since then. I also remember not expecting to get along super well with some of the people who are now my closest friends. My point: I am terrible at figuring out who will and won't be a lasting friend and I should stop trying to make quick judgements about people.
2. Learn to focus your effort. Freshman year, I put a lot of effort into certain classes that really didn't require that much time and energy. Some of that extra energy did pay off, but some (for example: health class) I could've gotten the same results with much less stress and effort. I'm still working on this one (perfectionism is a hard habit to break), but I wish I would've started working sooner.
3. You're not as weird as you think you are. I had a very high opinion of my own weirdness coming out of high school — I wasn't quite sure if I was a nerd or a geek or a fangirl or all three*, but I knew that I was something outside of the mainstream. Aaaaaand then I came to college and discovered that my brand of "weird" is actually pretty socially acceptable; I just didn't have enough data points to recognize it. (That said, the steadily-growing popularity of fantasy and sci-fi media doesn't hurt.) And even when I'm at my craziest, I'm significantly tamer than some other people I know (who can be downright esoteric at times).
4. Group projects aren't always horrible. Honestly, I probably dreaded having to do group projects more than I did the actual academic challenge of college. I knew how to work hard and work well on my own. Group work, on the other hand? Horrors. Except . . . if you get the right group of people, it's not bad. I've had a few awful experiences (most of them freshman year), but even those weren't nearly as horrible as I feared.
5. Don't be afraid to step up — it's less stressful than you think. Freshman year, I did not think of myself as a leader. And I still don't want to be the one in charge of everything, but I am a lot more comfortable with taking the lead. As it turns out, a major part of "leading" a group is just keeping everyone organized, figuring out who does what, making sure people stay on task, and occasionally picking up the slack — and having permission to do all that actually decreases my stress level to a degree. Yeah, my brain doesn't make sense, and I wish I'd figured that out sooner.

So, yeah. That's what I've got. What would you like to tell your younger self (at whichever point in time you pick)? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

*All three. Definitely all three, just in different domains.