From Leaving to Loving: My Semester Reflection

         

            I began this semester with the unshakable feeling that I had made a mistake. No one tells you that starting over can feel just as difficult the second time around. It doesn’t get easier just because you’ve done it before. I arrived on campus feeling fragile, exhausted before the first week had even ended, and after only a few days, I did what I thought I needed to do: I left. I packed my things, got in my car, and went home. In hindsight, I don’t think I was running away. I think I was looking for something to hold onto, a familiar place, a familiar version of myself. Eventually, I made the harder choice: I came back.

This time, I didn’t try to be brave all at once. I let myself be uncertain. I let myself be new. I reached out to people I barely knew and said yes to coffee, to walks, to late-night drives filled with music and silences that didn’t feel empty. I sat in dining halls with people who would become friends and in classes that would challenge what I thought I cared about. Slowly, and without realizing it, I started stitching together a life.

The friendships I made this semester didn’t just fill my days; they redefined them. There’s something sacred about the kind of closeness that comes not from shared history, but from mutual willingness—to be open, to be real, to show up. I found people who reminded me what it feels like to laugh without reservation, to feel known without having to explain every part of yourself. Through them, I learned to stop trying to become the person I thought I should be, and instead started learning to like the person I already was.

Academically, things shifted too. I threw myself into my studies not out of obligation, but out of curiosity. I found myself captivated by anthropology, a subject I once knew little about but now can’t imagine learning without. The questions it asked, about culture, power, language, and belonging, felt strangely personal. It gave me a framework to better understand not just the world, but myself. Declaring the minor felt natural, like a quiet act of becoming.

I also started my blog, tentatively at first. I didn’t know what I was trying to say, only that I needed to say something. What I didn’t expect was how healing it would be to give shape to my thoughts, to place them in the open and trust that they were worth reading. Through writing, I began to understand myself in a way I never had in conversation. I learned that vulnerability is not just brave, it’s connective. It builds bridges where silence once stood.

Of course, not everything came easily. Math, as always, was a mountain I had to climb. There were nights where I stared at problems I couldn’t solve, convinced that I wasn’t smart enough to be here. But what changed was how I responded. I reached out. I asked questions. And the professors I was once intimidated by revealed themselves to be patient, kind, and quietly rooting for me. They didn’t expect perfection, they celebrated persistence.

Now, as I sit here writing this final reflection, I realize how much I’ve changed. I’m no longer measuring my success by how seamlessly I fit in or how few mistakes I make. I’ve learned to value something much deeper: connection. Curiosity. Resilience. The ability to stay when it would have been easier to go.

I’ve also started to understand that building a life isn’t about grand gestures, it’s about the daily act of showing up. For class. For your friends. For yourself. This semester, I showed up even when I was uncertain, even when I didn’t recognize myself, even when I doubted whether I belonged. And somewhere in that process, I began to feel at home, not just here, in this place, but within myself.

I’m still learning. I’m still growing. But I no longer feel like I’m starting from nothing. I’ve built friendships that feel real and grounding, not transactional or temporary. I’ve found subjects that light something up in me and professors who see me not as a number, but as someone worth investing in. I’ve discovered a kind of self-acceptance I didn’t know I was capable of, the kind that isn’t contingent on perfection but is rooted in presence and honesty.

It’s hard to put into words just how meaningful this semester has been because it wasn’t perfect. It was messy, uncertain, overwhelming, and yet it was full of beauty. It’s the kind of growth you don’t always notice until you pause and look back. And now that I have, I see it clearly.

Leaving now is bittersweet. I know this version of the story—the late-night talks, the unexpected laughter, the confidence that came not from knowing all the answers but from learning to ask better questions—won’t stay exactly the same, but I will carry it with me. All of it. The fear. The friendship. The becoming. And maybe that’s the most important thing I’ve learned: that leaving doesn’t have to mean losing. Sometimes, it just means you’ve grown enough to take what you’ve found and let it shape who you’ll be next.

            Here’s to the semester that changed me.