Congratulations, freshmen, on making it through your first semester of college.

We started off as fish out of water, clumsily looking for our classes and trying not to look too out of place. This semester was the first time for many of us to be almost completely on our own. We had to manage our time wisely to complete homework, attend class, do laundry, sleep, eat and still have time for fun.

Many of us learned how to share a small space with a complete stranger. If you and your roommate were fortunate enough to get along, next semester will hopefully go just as smoothly. If you and your roommate found that you just were not meant to live together, good luck next semester. Remember, just because you can’t live with someone doesn’t mean you can’t be friends.

We learned to stomach campus food and looked forward to any opportunity to eat off campus. We are all guilty of eating Ramen Noodles and Easy Mac because it is what we could afford.

We attempted to conquer money management. Some of us were more successful in this area than others. We learned how to spend wisely when buying food but splurged every now and then on clothes that we really didn’t need.

Studying and homework were time consuming, but I hope everyone has dodged those academic bullets by employing everything from study groups to hours at the library.

But no first-time-college student is perfect. We might have failed a few quizzes and procrastinated on a few papers, but we should learn from that.

With everything that we have yet to do, we are still finding time to have fun with friends and enjoy this last taste of our first semester.

Some of us may be ready to pack up and go home for winter break. We might want to be reunited with our high-school pals and share stories of college experiences with them.

We won’t forget the new friends we have made, whether they live in a town that is an hour away or a state away. Some of us have even made plans with those who live elsewhere during winter break. Once break is over, we will be refreshed and ready to start our second semester of college. But this time, we will actually know what we are doing.

Good luck to my fellow freshmen on finals, and let’s hear it for next semester, which I hope will be even better than our inaugural semester here at USF.

Olivia Hattan is a freshman majoring in mass communications.