Letter to my First-Year Self — Sara Kashani
To my freshman year self:
Life sucks for you right now. You’ll soon be introduced to your sophomore year roommate who takes you to Sixth Street Synagogue for your second Shabbat downtown (the first Shabbat was horrible), where you’re introduced to a really weird community that will become your family.
Not much will change in the next three years. You’ll want out of college on more than one occasion, I won’t lie. You’ll struggle through two semesters of chemistry and calculus, embarrass yourself a lot, disappoint tons of people, and you’ll never receive the academic validation you still crave three years later, so try to get over that sooner rather than later. At the same time, you’ll find yourself in some pretty good moments. You’re more religious than you ever thought you’d be, you’ve found friends who will be with you forever, and you’ve become so comfortable being yourself.
Following freshman year, you’ll continuously find yourself in awe of the life you have that you once dreamed of. You have a promising career in a field that you don’t even know exists. You figure out how to take care of your curls, and it usually doesn’t look terrible. You get to travel and learn things about the family that create immense gratitude for being alive against the odds. Your friends are some of the best people you’ll ever meet. You get your heart broken two or three times, and in the process you get unbelievably good at backgammon, tahdig flips, and small talk. You’re currently witnessing your frontal lobe begin to develop while evolving into a person you’re proud of being. You live your life inside of a Seinfeld episode and learn who to invite and who to exclude from each episode (yeah, you’re still terrified of eyin hara). Most importantly, you carve a place for yourself in Judaism. You love Hashem more than anything, and as that love cultivates, all your anxieties diminish. It takes a while, but eventually, you’ll find yourself praying every single morning and tearing up at Kabbalat Shabbat weekly.
What I’m trying to say is everything gets better despite how hard college will be. Your whole life is falling into place with help from Gd.
There are a lot of specifics I’ll leave out for the sake of Bronfman staff reading this, but to answer your most pressing question: you’re not going to graduate with a ring, but you are really so ok with it. Like really, it’s so fine.
Enjoy college, little me.
