Freshman year thus far has been a lot like summer camp. Sure, there may have had a few rough patches — like, any day before an IHUM paper was due — but for the most part, life has been pretty damn sweet. It’s been a quarter full of firsts; from football season to Full Moon, everything about Stanford thus far has felt new and exciting.

 

But, as fall quarter comes to a close and finals loom, are we freshmen destined to lose that giddy love and excitement for every aspect of Stanford life?

 

I sure as hell haven’t lost my Cardinal love, but some of the eagerness has definitely faded away. For example, during the first few weeks of the quarter, I woke up every day at 8:30 a.m. — a full hour and a half before my first class — in order to pick out an outfit, carefully apply my makeup, straighten my hair and eat a leisurely, nutritionally balanced breakfast in Stern’s dining hall. I arrived to every class at least five minutes early and would have parted with my favorite Steve Madden boots before I considered missing any of my classes. (Hey, I told you in my first column that I was totally That Freshmen. Did you think I was joking or something?)

 

Nowadays, I’m lucky to roll out of bed at 9:40 a.m., and the Getting Ready routine that once took 90 minutes now takes about nine — and that includes the time it takes to grab my breakfast of champions (read: a warm Diet Coke).

 

Don’t get me wrong. I do still enjoy the material I’m learning in my classes, but the thought of lectures now typically fills me with more dread than giddiness.

 

And as we freshmen get more settled into college life, our attitudes toward our classes aren’t the only things that our shifting; our relationships with each other are changing perhaps even more dramatically. What may have first seemed like one of your roommates endearing, quirky traits — like, say, sleeping through nine million alarms — has ceased to be the least bit funny or cute and has become super fucking annoying. (True story: I know one girl whose roommate set six alarms in order to wake up for her 9 a.m. class — the first of which went off at 7 a.m….every single day. Umm…inconsiderate much?) Now that the niceties are over, roommates are starting to show their true colors, and sometimes they’re pretty heinous. Some pairs that expected to be bridesmaids in each other’s weddings are starting to realize that they’re far from BFFs, and not so far from enemies.

 

So maybe the starry-eyed period of wonder is beginning to dwindle for some of us frosh. But is this necessarily a bad thing? Before coming to Stanford, I envisioned this place as a magical, academic haven — sort of like a fairy-tale kingdom, if fairy tales had midterms instead of fire-breathing dragons. After being here for ten weeks, I have started to realize that while Stanford may be incredibly wonderful, it is also incredibly real, with its own sets of problems and areas in need of improvement. Over my next two quarters here on The Farm, I hope to gain a better understanding of these issues. Maybe by then I’ll have traded in some of my freshman-ness for maturity.

 

Do you have a way for Bianca to get from Twain to the Quad in less than 10 minutes? She’d love those extra 300 seconds of sleep. Let her know at blchavez “at” stanford “dot” edu.