I feel like I other people have already posted about this topic, but here it goes.

I am currently in my senior year studying history and minoring in educational studies and i am also an RA. I will be graduating this spring of 2022. I just wish I could go back and change my experience. Let me first start off by saying that I was quiet kid growing up and was pretty introverted. I did not talk a lot growing up and was not involved in that many extracurriculars in school. I applied to a couple of UC's as I live in California and got into one of them. I told myself that things were going to be different when I got to college, but nothing indeed changed. I did not really know how to hold a conversation with others and had a hard time making friends. I did meet some people on my floor in the beginning, but I did not get that close with them and we eventually stopped talking. I did have roommates living with me, but we did not end up being that close as we hardly ate together, went out to places together, and or even talk to each other when we all were in the room. I did join a couple of clubs my first year, I joined my school's newspaper for a bit and joined a poet's club, but I eventually stopped going because I became severely depressed due to me feeling like I was alone and did not have any friends I could hang out with or talk to. I did have a friend that also came from my high school, but we did not hang out that much because we lived on completely different sides of campus. I mostly ate alone and would usually go right when the dining commons opened and right before it closed, so no one would see me from my floor.

Fast forward to my second year, I ended up living with the friend and it was good for the most part, but we had a falling out in the middle of it and they ending up taking a break (and leaving) from school. We would be passive aggressive toward one another and did not really talk some times. We did have good days, but not always. At this point, I was feeling a little better because I got an on-campus job and had great co-workers that I connected with, but everything had shutdown due to COVID-19. I continued with online schooling throughout my second and third-year and am finally back to campus where I am surrounded by people where I can make connections. Over the course of my third-year, I had reflected a lot on my life and was more aware of being in the present and making the most of it. However, I feel like because of COVID, I lost a lot of the opportunities to get involved on campus and make connections with other, especially since I am completing my last two quarters until graduation. I know COVID was something that affected everyone in some shape or form, but I just feel so sad because I am surrounded by people (my RA team and people I follow on social media) who are involved in so many different orgs on campus and made the most of their experience. I also want to acknowledge that what they did with their time has nothing to do with what I could've done, but I guess seeing them be a part of campus makes me wish I could have been like them: being involved on campus and making connections that you can look back on. I just wish talking to people was not such a struggle for me. Why could not I have been a person where talking to people and forming connections is easy? The thing is that I love and want to talk to people, but I never know what to say and how to keep a conversation going. I always tell myself that it's something I just need to keep working on, but I just hate that I have to do it. I just wanted the college experience that everyone glamorizes and talks about. I also just wish I had the mindset I have now four years ago when I first went to college.

[tl:dr]: i am in my last year of school, with two quarters remaining left and i wish i made more experiences. i wish i knew everything back then that i do now. i wish had a group of friends here on campus that i could hang out with and talk to. i wish i was more involved on campus and was a part of more clubs. i feel like COVID took away some of the time i had to feel like a college student on a college campus.

I hope what I wrote made sense. I am not even sure if I got everything I wanted to say out. Thank you to those who read it all the way through, I know it was a lot. I kinda just wanted to share this and get this off my chest. I am also wondering if anyone else can relate to my story and maybe has advice they can give.