“Straight lines are boring. Some of the best parts of Carolina will be your unexpected turns — the class you take on a whim, the project that becomes a passion, the friend you meet because you decided to show up.”

–Magnus Egerstedt, executive vice chancellor and provost, said to the UNC Class of 2030

Look around at your new home.

You deserve to be here. Think of all the work you did to get here. So much homework, so many early mornings, projects, finals, essays, applications, practices, meetings. Years.

Then the waiting.

Now you’re in a strange place which is much more real than the website, Instagram posts and catalogues. I remember September, 1986. I had hauled myself all the way to Boston, a place I’d never visited before. I remember the weird, lonely feeling of being in a strange room, the wire bed frames with thin mattresses, three of them, three small desks and a window that looked out on an alley in a totally foreign place. There was a co-ed bathroom too, something I will never understand the need for, and it didn’t smell good.

It’s gonna feel awkward. It’s gonna be weird. There’s no cure for this discomfort. A new car is gonna feel new for a while. A new house is not going to feel like home. Until it does. There’s no timeline on this. No blog posts or YouTube videos are going to give you a hack to feel comfortable in 72 hours. You may not be comfortable; you are safe, however.

I’m talking not just to my Maverick folks at Reed College in Portland, UC Santa Barbara, and Long Beach State- but to anyone starting college now. I have a few thoughts.

1. Since you have to eat, try never to eat alone. If a roomate isn’t hungry, maybe someone lounging around the hallway, a classmate, someone you helped move in, always try and eat with someone else. But if you do go alone, just take your food and sit with a group, or near someone, say hi, smile, nod, introduce yourself, and resist the urge to stare at your phone while you eat. Feel the quiet, or the noise, look around, be where you are, make conversation, even a few superficial words- that counts.
2. Your roomate’s job is not to be your best buddy. Your job is not to be your roomates friend. You each have one job; be a neat and clean respectful cohabitator and sharer of your common space. If you guys become friends and are reminiscing 30 years later at the Alumni tent at the The Big Game (i’ve seen this, it is beautiful) that’s great. But now, freshman year, that’s not the priority. It can also lead to hurt feelings. I was fast friends with one of my roomates; I put a bit too much weight on him, went to dinner with him, went to the gym- but when he branched out later in the year, I was butt-hurt because I hadn’t done the same. Try to avoid this. Wear deodorant, pick your clothes up off the floor, be tidy- that’s enough. It goes both ways, you have enough on your plate without feeling guilty if you are making new connections and trying new things- which is exactly what you should be doing. Be social, sure, hang out, but don’t take on or assign a job no one signed up for.
3. This may be the most important one. It’s the simplest, but also the hardest to do: Be Patient. Someone somewhere, in the next 30 days will be saying within earshot, “I can’t stand this place. My friend at ________ State says it’s so cool there at the ___________ is so much better…” the grass is always greener in our looksmaxxing, everything maxxing world of a million options. This may resonate. You may feel like, yes, I knew this wasn’t the place, something feels off, etc. I succumbed to that and bailed on my first school. It’s not that I regret it, it turned out fine- and people do transfer- but I do regret coming to feel that way mainly because I was letting those voices into my head.

Give it time. Give it a year, but give that year everything you’ve got.

Sit in the hallway with a book and just say hi to people walking by. Smile. Go to any event, as weird or out of character as it may be. Go to your first ever football or field hockey game or lecture on fossils (lectures usually have free food too ) . Get on a first name basis with that barista who makes your latte. Your annoying musical theatre neighbor three rooms down is in a show she’s been singing in that weird co-ed bathroom for three weeks? Great, go to the show. Tell her you want a flyer for your room. Rush a fraternity or sororoity. Yes, try it, they are not all what you see on TV. Sit in the student section of the game, be that guy who’s shirtless with a big letter painted on your chest, I mean, someone has to do it right? Look people in the eye. Yes, bring a comfortable mattress topper, some college mattresses feel like 6 inches of straw from 1907.

Sometimes it’s going to feel like everyone else has found their people, maybe even a month from now. Everyone except you. There will still be those moments, what am I doing here? Why don’t I have a best friend yet? I want to go home. I want to see my dogs. I want to sleep in my bed. Look around, those people you see, they have got those feelings too. Be open to the possibility that this year will be amazing.

You deserve to be there. You’ve earned it. It’s okay if you aren’t enjoying it yet. You will. You already did the most amazing and magical thing; you showed up.