Definitely not Stella Kowalski

In just a few days, I'll be on a plane to Los Angeles to begin my first year at USC, and I've never felt such a confounding rush of fear. Throughout high school, I always daydreamed of going somewhere adventurous and different, but now that the change I so fervently sought out is becoming a reality, I'm overwhelmed with uncertainty. Taking an enormous leap into young-adulthood is invigorating, but this new freedom comes at the price of the familiarity and stability of home. Making a new set of friends, being away from loved ones, plunging into rigorous coursework, and managing change gracefully are all things that seem harder as they near the present. On top of that, everyone has rigid expectations of what the "quintessential college experience" should look like, and these high standards make the transition seem even more stressful. In any event, the pressure to make the next four years the "best ones" of our lives, along with our misguided tendency t...

I seriously doubt that more than a few family members, a few close friends, or a few pseudo-acquaintances internet stalking me (it's okay, I'm not judging you) will read this, but if you are among one of those fine people, hi. I really hate making a self-important introduction as if I'm some semi-successful YouTuber greeting his/her audience of awkward pre-teens, but since this is my first post, I guess it has to be done. I mean, to be fair, this is not my first ever blog post- from the time I was in fifth grade to sort of around ninth grade, I had a different blogger account which shall not be named. If anyone finds it, they'll have proof of my dark, Doctor Who obsessed past. As it happens, I'm about to graduate from high school- this time tomorrow, actually, assuming it doesn't get rained out and rescheduled. So, I figured that there would be no better time to undergo a very insignificant but satisfying internet blog metamorphosis. It's really quite stra...