After 13 years of school, we finally made it. College – the horizon that we chased after for so long – is, at long last, a reality.

As we enter into a new stage in our lives, we are armed to the teeth with brand new plastic pencils and fresh notebooks. The fierce motivation in our eyes only just conceals the naivety and fear that keeps us up at night. As freshmen, our hopes and expectations run high, in spite of the fact that we actually have absolutely no clue what we are doing. You have to give us points for being confident, right?

We expect a lot of things when entering college and for good reason: Friends, family and the media tell us that college is the pinnacle of the human experience. Well, not quite, but they say that it is supposed to be pretty awesome. We get to party, stay up late, hang out with friends, and get some freedom from our parents for the first time (and that is just the social side of things). We also get to choose our classes (sort of), and we get these awesome schedules with weird breaks in the middle of the day.

Even though I am looking forward to those perks, if I take the time to think about what is happening to me, I will probably just crawl into a corner and weep. This whole transition thing is a bit terrifying to me.

It is like we are stepping off into some unknown chasm, hoping and praying that the last 13 years of school and all the stories that we have been told about college life add up to some amount of preparation. In the end though, what can anyone do to prepare us for such a massive change? What exactly are we supposed to expect from college?

At most, we can speak in generalities better suited for beauty contests than for reality. We all want to better ourselves and the world around us. That is, for most of us, a given.

However, when all is said and done, I really just hope I make it through to the end of the year with a majority of my sanity and a decent GPA instead of filling out my application to the mental hospital.