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" In my final blog for Seventeen, I&amp;#039;m going to share with y&amp;#039;all a letter saying the things I would have liked to have heard a year ago before I left for college. Dear Veronica,  This year will be the most dynamic, riveting, and incredible year of your life thus far. You think you already know that, when, in reality, you have NO idea how fantastic and life-changing this first year of college will be. You have some doubts. You don&amp;#039;t want to leave the comfortable familiarity of your home in Ridgewood. You wonder whether it was a good idea to apply early decision to a college that no graduate from your high school has ever attended. You also doubt YOU as a human being - you&amp;#039;re not too confident about your abilities to be a good student or a good friend, nor are you too sure what you want to do with your life. Rest assured, this year will change all of that, and by the end of O-Week - a week of little sleep and lots of new friends and face paint - you will also know that yes, indeed, applying early decision to this Texan gem of a school was the absolute right choice. You did pick the best university for you, even though it&amp;#039;s 2,000 miles from home. Within that very first week you will have been integrated into Will Rice College. You will bond with your fellow freshmen through the newness of your experiences. You will don your body in rust and gold paint and learn about some crazy Rice traditions. You will know in your heart that &amp;quot;Will Rice Will Sweep&amp;quot; as you bellow that cheer at the other colleges in a cheer battle. You&amp;#039;ll renew those vows in a few months during an epic water balloon fight during Beer Bike.  Within your very first week of school, all of your professors will know your name, even in those 100+ lecture classes. You&amp;#039;ll fall in love with the feeling of strolling across the academic quad, beautifully landscaped with pine trees and the greenest Texan grass among the most fantastic Mediterranean architecture unique to Rice. You&amp;#039;ll enjoy your bio class and find your econ class incredibly difficult. You&amp;#039;ll discover that you can skip class very easily in college. Then, you&amp;#039;ll discover that just because you can do something doesn&amp;#039;t mean that you should, especially after you fail a few bio quizzes.   Within those first two months of college, you&amp;#039;ll have made more friends and attended more parties than you thought you ever would. You&amp;#039;ll meet a very tall computer scientist from Austin, a homosexual architect from Florida, a beautiful math and statistics double major from Boston, a baking-obsessed buff biochemist from Oregon, a brilliant house-music obsessed electrical engineer from Houston, and of course, a crazy half-Brazilian entrepreneur-networking prodigy from Nashville. All of these people will become some of the best friends you&amp;#039;ll ever have. While many of your old high school friends will be rushing sororities and attending frat parties, you&amp;#039;ll be throwing parties right outside of your door on the famous &amp;quot;Long Hall&amp;quot; in Will Rice&amp;#039;s Old Dorm. You&amp;#039;ll run around campus in a hula skirt; you&amp;#039;ll get a concussion playing powderpuff football; your best friend will break a ceiling pipe; you&amp;#039;ll attend your first Night of Decadence at Wiess College; you&amp;#039;ll eat servery food - lots and lots of servery food - at Sunday brunches as you and your new friends discuss the craziness of the weekend and how have to complete all of the work you&amp;#039;ve procrastinated until that afternoon.  You&amp;#039;ll miss your high school boyfriend, and as it turns out, he&amp;#039;ll miss you too. So, you&amp;#039;ll get back together for some months in a successful long distance relationship. But, after Spring Break, you&amp;#039;ll find yourself so engrossed in and in love with your amazing Rice world, that it would be unfair to stay in the relationship. Sad as it is that the relationship ends, you use your extra time to realize your dreams and passions, including your love of making films and your new desire to pursue majors very unlike the engineering and science careers you&amp;#039;ve always thought yourself destined for.   You&amp;#039;ll cry a little bit. You&amp;#039;ll cry after you think you failed that first differential equations test. You&amp;#039;ll cry throughout some serious boy-related problems in April. You&amp;#039;ll cry after your roommate packs up her stuff for the summer a full two weeks before you do. But you&amp;#039;ll mostly be crying of happiness, like when you finish your midterms with flying colors, or reunite with your friends after a long winter break, or when the Will Rice bike team wins two out of the three races at Beer Bike, or when you are just SO HAPPY to be among your friends. So stop worrying.  By the end of second semester, you&amp;#039;ll look back and question most of the hundreds of thing&amp;#039;s you&amp;#039;ve done. Wait, you went to a ridiculous pub concert the night before the day that Houston shut down because the temperature dropped below 40 degrees for the first time, like, ever?! You planned an all-day pirate-and-tourist themed party for your entire college even though you&amp;#039;re a freshman!? You&amp;#039;re going to be an advisor at Sid Rich College for next year&amp;#039;s O-Week?! You had internship placements in New York City that you opted out of in favor of film school!?!? You passed physics and differential equations because you decided to start studying by the pool in your bikini!?!? You wrote all about it for Seventeen Magazine!?!?   After eight of the happiest months of your life, you&amp;#039;ll be sitting in a caf\u00E9 in downtown Manhattan, writing a letter to yourself, thinking back on your freshman year, wondering where it all went, and trying your best to pinpoint the milestones and moments when you changed. But how could you possibly parse and separate these powerful emotions, memories, and lessons that are - in your mind - all integral parts of one grand adventure? No need to overthink it. Relax, and simply look back on your adventures with a loving heart as you move forward, day after day, into the next day of the rest of your life.   Get prepared for the most fantastic whirlwind of a lifetime. Go into college with an open mind, an open soul, and a hungry heart, and you won&amp;#039;t be disappointed. I know you will - because hey, I can I see your future!  All my love and all my luck, Veronica &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a secret magic past world that you only notice when you&amp;#039;re looking back at it.&amp;quot; - Rocky Votolato Have you ever written a letter to yourself? What was it for? Share in the comments! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/life/school/advice/a14531/letter-to-myself/>