One year.

It's been one hell of year. New school. New classmates. New professors. New environment.

Today is Monday. Normally, I should be waking up at 4.30am, getting ready for school by 4.45am, leaving the dorm by 6.10am, and (if he tells me he's got time to spare) stop by Mcdonald's for a quick hi and bye. Then it's off to my first class of the week--PE: Track and Field. The day continues with Zoology100Lab in the morning and Zoology100Lecture in the afternoon, and by 2.30pm, it's either I'm on my way back to the dorm or I'm walking around the school with friends.

Today is Monday. But instead of waking up at 4.30am to get ready for school, I have just climbed on to bed after re-watching season one episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I wake up 2½ hours later (7am), but then I feel it's too damn early so I go back to bed and sleep for another hour. The day continues with breakfast, DVD marathons, lunch, and more DVD marathons. There are no labcons, no dissecting of frogs or ripping out the frog's skin, no reports, and no posttests. Actually, there is nothing to do.

It's amazing how one school year can make such a difference. My lifestyle, my views, my person--everything is different. Everything has changed.

I came home last Friday with two big duffel bags, one big backpack, three huge paper bags and to big pillows. It looked as if I had just moved in to a new apartment! Wow. I'm home--home for two months, and then it's back to the dorm. My home for roughly ten months. So where exactly is my home?!

Anyway, the whole "moving in" thing got me winded this last few days. It takes some getting used to, actually. Funny, I need to get used to the idea that it's okay to sleep in and wake up at 8am, when I used to think that was one of the worst crimes any student can commit. I need to get used to being a bum. I need to get used to eating three full meals a day, and munching on chips and drowning in ice cream in between.

Strange are the ways of life in college. So how did I go from there to here?

It's the first semester. I am scared shitless. I have three older cousins in UST (one in Engineering, another in Architecture, and one more in Accountancy), and yet I have never felt so alone and so lost. I have no idea where to go. I don't know anybody else in my college. In Dr. Miranda Bailey's words, I'm "a runt, a nobody."

I meet my blockmates (the bestest best blockmates in the world!) and we make up BSN 1-3. In the coming months, I realize just how little I am in this big college. The "competition" is a life-or-death situation, everyone's future depends on making it to the cut-off. I have blockmates and other batchmates coming from prestigious and uber-high standard schools. I become acquainted with high school valedictorians and salutatorians and honor graduates. Suddenly, I find myself shrinking...and shrinking...and shrinking. When in high school, I used to be in the Student Council, I was a member of this club and that club, I was sent to this place and that place for a scholarship or a congress, and I was so sure of where I stood in class, now I have no idea how I would even get past the first semester alive. From a class of 18 girls (and no other sections), I am thrown into a roomful of guys and girls--51 students in all, and 1o other sections.

At first, it's like high school. On Mondays and Wednesdays, my classes begin at 8am and end at 4pm. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, my classes are from 7am-12nn. My courses include Psychology, Logic, Math, Filipino, English, and Chemistry. I do algebra, I write essays, I do experiments. It all seems easy. Like I said, it's high school.

But then again, it's not high school. It's college. It's hard and pressuring and nasty and stressful. I do monthly, preliminary and final exams. I see my grades, and I feel like I'm not going to make it and get through the crazy world of nursing in one whole piece. I knew I was gonna crack. Yep, I was screwed.

It's the second semester. By now, I am hanging out with friends once in a while after school (unlike before when I used to go straight to the dorm after classes ended). I am getting the hang of Chemistry experiments and labcons. I am dealing with getting 79 in Zoology100Lab exams.

They say the second semester goes by so fast, you just don't feel it anymore. Everything's just...there. One minute you're studying for monthlies, the next minute you're making coffee to get you through reviewing for finals. It's just so damn fast.

But sometimes, something so unexpected happens that it just stops you on your tracks. It stops time. And you find yourself stuck at that one place, at that one moment--and you just want to stay there for the longest time.

I cannot end recalling my second semester without mentioning (note mentioning, not talking about) him. Much of how I changed in the past ten months had been influenced by how he treated me, the things he taught me and made me realize. Ha, I really don't know how to explain these sorts of things. He was just...he was just that. Yeah, that.

As my first semester had been dull and ordinary (even with all the freshman hype), my second semester had been exhilirating and extraordinary to the point that it got tiring. I got tired. Seriously. I had the chance to catch up with my high school friends during my friend's party, and I totally realized they were, at some point, still living high school. I, on the other hand, was just one step too close to college. No, not academics and organizations college--but college college, where everything's just "open" and "daring." I had a lot of firsts in college, some worth mentioning (like my first 79 in preliminary grades and my first taste at dorm life) and many NOT worth mentioning at all. Little secrets that just make my life more interesting. After all, we all love a few good mysteries, right?

And so, it ends. First year college ends.

It's been one hell of year. New school. New classmates. New professors. New environment.

I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. The courses.. The tests. The pressure. Then there are the other stuff: friends, family, and all sorts of relationships. I thought I knew, but I didn't. I wasn't prepared. College wasn't what I expected it to be. I wasn't what I expected myself to be. And it shocks me. And excites me.

"We all think we’re going to be great and we feel a little bit robbed when our expectations aren’t met. But sometimes expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the unexpected. You got to wonder why we cling to our expectations, because the expected is just what keeps us steady. Standing. Still, the expected's just the beginning, the unexpected is what changes our lives." --Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy