About a month ago, I turned 20. This wasn’t sudden—I knew it was coming. It didn’t sneak up from behind or jump out from under my bed. In the back of my mind, there had been a slow countdown to the date that had been in my calendar since Jan. 11, 2005. Still, I wasn’t ready for how weird it would feel to no longer be a teenager.

My best childhood memories are a patchwork of my time spent in Otis Wood Lands, a small community exploding with my family’s history. Over forty years ago, my grandfather and his brother each bought small cabins in Otis, a tiny town in rural Massachusetts.

We have all gone through it, or currently are: the nerve-racking, fun, and stressful freshman year. At the six-week mark, most of us are well immersed in the delicate dance of making new friends and finding one’s place in the vast social landscape of college.