It’s been real. It’s been fun. And I guess it’s been real fun. Now, the hard question, how do I explain all of this to my parents?

This semester sucked me in, chewed me up, and spit me back out a much blonder, smarter, and cooler person. The result is nice, but the journey was strange– and I’m betting I’m not the only one. Luckily, I am an incredible communicator, and I’m here to drop some knowledge bombs.

Being a first semester freshman has been weird, not just socially, but mentally. Arriving here with my heart set on majoring in the sciences, I had a lot of existential crises; I found myself realizing that sciences weren’t for me, and often thinking that maybe college wasn’t, either. Luckily, this made for a really energetic Thanksgiving discussion. But how do you tell your parents that you hated your courses, stayed up until 3am the night before your final, and maybe, possibly, still failed the course? My suggestion: ask them to watch a Wes Anderson film with you, and right when Bill Murray is having some sort of mid-life crisis, drop this on them- you won’t be able to tell who they’re more disappointed in, you or Bill.

Now back to that whole “””Social“”” thing. We are all lonely- yeah, okay, there are a few of you lucky ones out there who have already found and bonded with your new best friends- COOL. For the rest of us, we have friends, they’re really cool, and we really like them! But we haven’t quite hit that level yet, we haven’t quite settled in- and it kind of sucks. Everybody is ready to have their best friends, and everybody is almost there, but you’re still kind of nervous that maybe three weeks will hurt those friendships and you’ll have to start all over again after break. My suggestion: literally everybody is feeling like this in some way, shape, or form. Don’t stress too much, try to keep in touch over break, and remember that everybody keeps telling you to hold on until next semester.

In addition to all of this, you probably did a ton of weird shit. You probably hooked up with someone you met in the bullseye your third weekend here (back when the bullseye was “the place to be”), or maybe you met someone really important to you and now you’re trying to avoid the responsibility of caring about a person. You probably got a tattoo because, let’s be real, it’s Kenyon and, like my dad said after I got mine, “u r the boss of u!” You maybe-probably mulligan’d a class, and who gives a shit? College is hard and some classes suck. Maybe you ate your weight in brownie brittle, go you! My suggestion: share this stuff with your parents (except that bullseye one, that’d be weird), they honestly just want to know what’s up and live vicariously through you.