Waking up with a black eye and no recollection of the evening was just the beginning of my freshman year at Quinnipiac.

I could not wait to begin the year. However, it quickly became a year full of mistakes and bad luck. Looking back on my year, I learned a great deal and can now prepare nearly any freshman for what to avoid. While experiencing those nine months of my life, I wanted nothing more than to start over and make better decisions.

My roommates and I constantly joke that our first year should’ve been an MTV reality show. It would probably get better ratings than even Jersey Shore. I’ve spent the last year recounting the events to friends and making jokes that I should sit down and write an article about what not to avoid your freshman year of college.

So, here I am, recounting a year full of tears upon tears, nights that involved too much alcohol, nights that involved no alcohol but still ended up negatively, and fights with roommates that resulted in me wanting to be anywhere but my room.

The “night I died,” as it’s often called, was where it all began. It was the very first weekend of October and a couple of my roommates and I had been invited to a party off campus. We were all excited to experience our first official college party, which resulted, on my part, with eight too many shots in just a half hour. It did not hit me right away but once it did, the evening became a complete blur. I woke up the next morning on our futon in the same clothes I had been wearing the night before with a very sore body and a black eye. That morning, my roommates sat down with me and recounted the evening. I couldn’t remember a single second of the night’s proceedings.

While the evening was terrifying and could’ve been a lot worse if I didn’t have people watching over me that night, I realized that this wasn’t me, I wasn’t the girl who I was leading people to believe was only one month into college.

The following weekend went well and I worked hard to prove to my new friends that I was not the typical party girl.

The third weekend was Parents’ Weekend, a weekend I anticipated because I believed seeing my family would get me back on safe ground. That Friday night, there was another off campus party that my roommates and some of our floor mates attended. The party ended up not being what we expected and we left.

I went back to my building to a room across the floor and ended up getting written up by the RA I lived with. This was not just awkward, but hurtful, as well as the fact that now it was not just my friends who thought differently of me, but my RA too. As a result, I was put on probation for two months.

The next weekend got even worse. One of the guys who lived next door had his twin brother and a couple of his friends stay over for the night. The evening started off well but ended up with me being pushed to the ground by one of the visitors. Security came after the incident and asked me if I wanted the visitor to be kicked off campus. I told them I did, which ended up escalating into an even bigger situation.

At 3 a.m., I was forced to walk down to security to get a “no contact order,” which is essentially a less strict restraining order against the guy next door because his twin brother was the one who had pushed me. The RA’s on duty were concerned that he would take his anger out on me.

For two and a half hours, I sat in security waiting for this “no contact order” to be processed. The room next door to me was guys that I had become best friends with and because of this “no contact order,” I was not allowed in their room for a month.

After October, my freshman year got better and there was not a great deal of drama until December right around finals. Girls always have problems and the way my year was going, it did not surprise me that a roommate conflict began. The fight started between the two of us but escalated into a fight between the six of us. We had constant roommate meetings and mediations but nothing was ever resolved. When time away from each other for a month over winter break did not help, she ended up moving out about a month into the second semester. Today, we’re friends and we just realized that living together was ruining our friendship.

Throughout this period, I had been seeing a guy since October. We were not exclusive until second semester but we should’ve been from the beginning. We started off as best friends and as many friend relationships do, it turned into more than that. The very first Friday back from winter break was when everything went downhill. While everything that had happened up to this point had been difficult, this Friday night would only begin how hard things would get.

The story is long and complicated and difficult to explain but to make a long story short, he was arrested that night for drugs. As a result, he was expelled. Right before his expulsion, we had decided to become exclusive. I could recount every moment of that month and explain how difficult it was for me but it would just be going around in circles.

Everyone has a freshman year story. Whether or not it was as dramatic as mine, it’s still a whirlwind of a year. You’re on your own, you’re meeting completely different people, you’re making your own decisions and you’re making mistakes that only you can get yourself out of. It’s difficult, and sometimes it gets even harder than you think it could, but in college you meet people that help you through every rough patch you suffer through. They’ll laugh with you, they’ll cry with you and they’ll grow to become more than just friends but family, and that’s what got me through this past year. My friends that became family knew I was not just the party girl and knew how much I needed them to get through it. You’re going to have bad nights and you’re going to have good nights, but every experience you have is worth it.

-Anonymous