College is about to begin in a few days. I have a lot of thoughts and worries about the semester ahead. Mostly about academic pressure and trying to keep up, but also finding a social bubble and maintaining it.

On average the amount of friends a person has peaks at age 25. It's the period before that, where you are exposed to many new people through new environments. While for some the thought of meeting a lot new people can be daunting, it can also be quite fun and interesting. Expanding your social circle means learning about many different attitudes to life. You begin to see what's outside of your own viewpoint. The excitement comes from spending time with those people and seeing how their personalities play out together.

This realization relieved a lot of the negative feelings I used to have towards meeting new people. What stayed though is the feeling of being incompetent especially when someone scores higher than me. A lot of people in my major have a strong basis of knowledge for science and I can see myself quickly falling of the wagon if the lecture content is too difficult.

Not only that, but also adapting to a new system of lectures and self-study, a mostly digital learning approach and finding your way around campus are all deemed to be significantly challenging.

Considering all of this you could say I am sufficiently excited and nervous to finally jump into the cold water.