You’re almost there.

In few months, you’ll be living with strangers, eating meals with people whose last names you don’t know yet, and trying to figure out which corridor leads to which classroom while pretending you already know. It will be exhilarating and disorienting in the same breath.

And somewhere in that beautiful chaos, you will start finding your people.

Some will just pass through your life like short chapters. But a few will stay. With them, you will share notes, secrets, anxieties, laughter, terrible food, last-minute exam panic, and countless small moments that will feel ordinary at the time.

Hold these people gently. A few of them will still be beside you decades from now, when the world looks entirely different and you’ll need someone who remembers who you were at the beginning.

You may not realize it then, but those friendships often become some of the most enduring relationships of your life.

But here’s the thing no one quite prepares you for – the same crowd that gives you your people will also give you everyone else. And everyone else is a more complicated story.

The ones who need something from you

You’ll meet people who gravitate toward you because you’re warm, or capable, or simply kind. Some of them will be genuine. Some of them will be drawn to what you can give – your notes, your calm, your willingness to help – without much intention of giving anything back.

You won’t always spot them immediately. They tend to show up most reliably when something is needed and disappear when nothing is.

You don’t need to become suspicious of everyone. Just pay attention. Friendship, the real kind, has a certain ease to it. It doesn’t leave you feeling quietly drained.

The ones who will pull you sideways

These ones are trickier, because you’ll actually like them.

They won’t mean any harm. They’ll just have a different relationship with time, with deadlines, with the idea of tomorrow. They’ll make skipping that lecture sound like a reasonable life decision. They’ll be genuinely fun, right up until the semester slips away.

You can love these people and still know when to say not tonight, I need to study. The friendship doesn’t have to end just because you’re going in a different direction on a Tuesday. But you’ll need to be honest with yourself about how much of your path you’re willing to trade for their company.

The ones who will test you in other ways

At some point, maybe at a party, maybe in a hostel room, maybe somewhere completely ordinary – someone will offer you something and frame your answer as a measure of who you are. Come on, it’s just once. Don’t be like that. Everyone does it.

I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’re seventeen, and you’re not going to walk into college without already knowing what you think about these things.

What I will say is this: the people worth keeping in your life will never need you to change yourself to earn their friendship. The ones who make you feel small for having a boundary – over anything, not just this – are telling you something important about themselves. Listen to what they’re showing you.

You are allowed to say no. Warmly, lightly, without drama, without owing anyone an explanation. And then move on with your evening like it was never a question at all. Because it wasn’t.

What to actually look for

Look for the person who texts you after a hard exam just to check in. The one who tells you honestly when you’re wrong about something, but gently. The one who can sit in silence with you in the library and somehow that silence feels like company.

Look for the one who is happy when good things happen to you. That one is rarer than you think.

These friendships won’t always announce themselves. Sometimes the person who ends up mattering most starts as someone you simply ate lunch next to because every other seat was taken.

Pay attention to how you feel after spending time with someone. Lighter, or heavier. More like yourself, or slightly less. That’s usually the clearest answer.

One last thing

College will be one of the most full, complicated, wonderful stretches of your life. Go into it with your eyes open, yes but go into it with your arms open too.

Have fun. Real fun. The kind you’ll still be laughing about at thirty. Let yourself be surprised by people. Let yourself be wrong about someone in the best possible way.

You already know who you are. That’s not going to disappear because you’re in a new city with new people. If anything, it’s about to get clearer.

You’ve got this – more than you know.

With all my love,

Mumma