by Elsea Rowling

Created on: July 14, 2010

The beginning of your first year in college can be both exciting and kind of terrifying.  For many of us it’s the first significant time we’ve spent away from home, and anxiety about grades, making new friends, and adjusting to campus life are all exceedingly common.  These anxieties can build up and overwhelm if you’re not proactive about taking care of yourself.

Even if your family lives near your campus, living apart—even a half hour apart—does have a strange and unsettling effect on most people at first, even though it can also be very liberating.  There’s no real solution to this, since growing up and away from those we love, becoming more independent in the process, is a necessary part of life.

At the same time, there’s no reason to completely cut everyone you care about out of your life when you go away to school; your family and old friends love you, and will always be one of your primary support networks.  Don’t feel like you’re bugging them by calling, e-mailing, or texting; they will understand that you’re feeling lonely, and need to talk with someone to process everything that’s going on.  In fact, I’d recommend setting up a loose schedule with your parents or closest friends: calling every Sunday afternoon, e-mailing every Thursday evening, or something along those lines.  You can always contact them more often, but the feeling of having a set time to get in touch with your “old life” can have a really calming effect if you’re feeling isolated and alone.  Just because they’re not close to you physically doesn’t mean they’ll forget about you.

Making new friends is the perennial complaint of people at new schools, and college is no exception.  But one thing you should have no anxiety about is feeling like you’re weird because you’re nervous, since basically everybody is in the same boat.  Freshman year at college is one of the very few times when everyone will be trying to make friends at exactly the same time, which means they’ll be extremely receptive to any friendship overtures you might make.  It’s not the same as trying to break into a clique of already established friends—everyone wants to talk to someone, since all their old friends are somewhere else!  And conversation topics abound: what classes to take, which professors are the best, what dorm you

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