Adjusting to a new environment is difficult, especially when coming into your first year of college. New place, new people, and new opportunities to form connections. To understand how to navigate this experience and how to appreciate what you have right now, I have some tasks for you to do that will hopefully guide this process, each task leaving you with something to think about.

Spend 15 minutes in the place you spend the most time at. Maybe it’s your dorm room where you can be alone, or somewhere in the building or on campus where you can see and interact with people.

Use those 15 minutes to write down three things that feel unfamiliar, three things that feel surprisingly comfortable, and one thing that sparks curiosity. Then take the time to observe this new environment. Pay attention to the new relationships you’ve formed, social norms, what kind of behavior is acceptable, and what is discouraged. Interact with people and the environment, like you have been.

After you feel like you’ve done enough interacting for one year, start reflecting on your previous environment: your past relationships, what you enjoyed about it, and what you would have changed. Compare that to your current environment and write down what has changed about your way of thinking so far.

Think about a part of yourself that you want to work on, and try to do the little things that will aid you. For example, if you wanted to build confidence, try joining conversations before class starts or answering questions your professor asks the class. If it makes you uncomfortable, it’s a sign that you’re learning, so take that as a sign to think about how you can make it more comfortable.

In return, ask some questions you wouldn’t normally ask to anyone, and pay attention to how you feel about the answer and generally how you feel after asking the question itself.

Next, write about what habits you want to keep from your old environment, what habits you want to leave behind, and what new habits you want to build, and as well as what your ideal daily routine and rhythm would be.

Flip to a new page in your journal and ponder the emptiness of the page. What does it mean? What should you write in it? What if it were your last page and it still feels like you have a long way to go? Do you save it to detail a moment deserving of documentation, or do you take advantage of the space on the page and begin writing everything that has happened so far since coming to college?

Write a letter to your past self, detailing what you learned, what surprised you, what you’re proud of, and the ways in which you believe this new environment has changed you.

Whenever you find the time, sit down and write for five minutes answering: What’s the first image that appears when you picture your future, and what kind of emotions does that scene give you?

Think about the different possibilities: the scene that feels more likely, the scene that feels ideal, and the scene that feels impossible but exciting. Write about whether you feel like things are working towards your favor and if that impossible future could feel possible once you work towards it.

Be specific about what kind of future you want, and come up with a set of yours to complete by the end of the year. For example, write about what you want to understand about yourself by the end of the year.

Write about where you are now, where you hope to be in the future, and three of your characteristics that you believe will help you get there.

If you could do it all over, would you do it different? If fixing a clock meant you could turn back time, but the second you did, everything would change, would you take that chance? This chance could be offered as a once in a lifetime opportunity, and you don’t want to make the wrong choice.

Write for 10 minutes answering: What age or moment you would return to, what you would tell yourself in the moment, what kind of choices you made that you would change, and what choices you made that would stay the same.

Next, think about why you would want to do things differently and what you learned from it.

Pick a specific moment in time you would want to change, and ponder what happened and what led up to it. Think about what happened, why it happened, what you wish you had done differently, what you now understand about that moment that you didn’t back then, and what you hope to understand better.

Now get specific with what you would do and think about what you would bring with you if you were given a second chance. Write down what you would warn your younger self about, what you would encourage them to do, what you would tell them to stop worrying about, what you would thank them for. Think about the specific actions you took in a specific moment , and wonder what you could’ve done to change things and acknowledge when there was nothing you could’ve done to change things.

If you feel unsatisfied with how your life has ended up as and want things to be different, write a scene about what your days look like, what you enjoy about your life currently, what you’re working toward, and how you plan on getting it.