hello children, please chill out

Why is it that I find myself reading things that make me frustrated with the world? And with such frequency. I should be ashamed of myself.

The thing is, I wind up feeling like girls my age are condescended to. (I do not think there is a readable way to make that sentence not end in a preposition, but fuck prescriptive grammarians anyway). The advice we get is flawed fundamentally, because it's always prefaced with, "I know! The world is so scary, right?!"

It's worth mentioning that guys don't seem to get this advice. Don't ask me to back this up with evidence, because I'm too lazy to find any, but it seems to me that the college advice targeted at guys is prefaced with "grunt Beer grunt Girls grunt No Parents grunt Sex... College!"

Of course, the advice-giving media has a vested interest in our continued need for advice. If the world is as big and scary as they say it is, and they're the ones with the answers, we're going to keep coming back. In real life, the best college advice I can think of is, "It's easier than you think."

• If you had any friends in high school, you'll have friends in college. If you didn't have any friends in high school, you'll probably still have friends in college, because college is bigger.
• If activities call out to you, you'll join them. If you find yourself having not joined any clubs or anything, either none of them have called out to you (which is fine), or you'll probably keep your eyes open for new stuff to join.
• Parties are fun and generally not scary.
• Classes in college are harder than classes in high school, but you're ready for them.
• You'll be so fine.

I hope that just one person frantically googling "How to transition to college" or "college freshman advice" or some nonsense like that (that I totally googled myself back in the day) happens upon me here and takes a deep breath and calms the hell down.

Love always,
Clara