A letter from December 8th, 2016

December 2016 Dear future Jessica,     Hello, I hope you’re doing well. Right now, my first semester of college is almost over. I can not believe how fast it went, but I’m sure the rest of college will fly by as well. I’m very happy that it’s coming to a close because I need a break. Right now I take five classes, work at Public Safety and Tropical Smoothie, and I am in the Criminal Justice club. All of these activities keep me very busy, although I’m happy to be getting as much experience as I can here at Adelphi. Hopefully you’ve done as much as you can throughout your four years here. Coming in to Adelphi, I expected it to be similar to high school, but I was wrong. College is completely different from what I expected. The work is much more challenging than what it was in high school, and it is also much more time consuming. Now that it is finals week, I am more stressed than ever. I spend much more time in the library than I would have ever imagined. For the majority of the semester, I lived in a converted triple  in Chapman Hall with two girls whom I was barely friends with. I expected dorming to be very different because I expected  to be close with my roommates, but that was not what happened. They were nice girls, but we just had nothing in common. I also expected to have much more space, and being in such a small room with two people was not fun. At home, I used to do all of my work in my room. Although in college, I never got anything done in my room, so almost every night I was in the library studying. Recently, I moved from Chapman Hall to Eddy Hall with one of my best friends, Amanda. Even though it’s only been a few weeks, I am much happier there. It makes living at Adelphi so much more fun. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to make new friends here. They are all so helpful and kind, to say the least. We study together almost every night. Having such great friends makes my experience here enjoyable, while still allowing me to stay on track with my schoolwork. and I can’t wait to meet even more people.  At the same time, I’m very happy that I still keep in contact with my friends from high school. I hope when you’re reading this that you are still friends with Kym and Peter from home and Amanda and Taylor from Adelphi. I have a lot of expectations for the coming years. Next semester, I am planning on joining a sorority. Now that I am getting used to college, I want to get more involved. I would like to join more clubs and participate in more events on campus. I would also like to start participating in more community service. Hopefully, by the time you’re reading this you’ve joined clubs like Caliber or the Equestrian team. Getting more involved also gives me an opportunity to meet new people and make new friends. I am also excited to take new classes. My major is still undeclared, so I am taking as many classes that interest me as I can. I am hoping to figure out what I am really interested in and what I want to major in. This semester, I learned that it is much easier to find out what I do not like, rather than finding out what I am interested in. I entered college thinking that I might want to major in English, but after taking a writing class this semester, I know that English is not for me. I was interested in the class that I took about the environment, so I am taking a similar science course next semester. I am also taking Psychology and Sociology next semester because they seem interesting to me. Maybe one of these will become my major, but who knows?   Right now, I am not sure what I want to do after college. I feel that this decision will be much easier once I pick my major. All I know is that I want to be able to find a major that I know I can make a career out of. It is important to me that I find something I enjoy learning about, but will also secure me a career in the future. Maybe I will need to go to graduate school or get a higher degree, but I am not sure yet. For now, I am mostly just worried about figuring out the next four years. Hopefully, after I graduate, I can find a job in the field I choose. It is very important to me that I enjoy what I do. I do not want to dread going to work every day.  I would love to be able to live and work on Long Island.  Eventually I would like to move into my own house and start a family.  Although it seems like this is all so far away, I know that it will be here in the blink of an eye!