OK, no one is going to tell you this. They are going to say that college is going to be the time of your life and ask if you’re so excited.

However, everyone fails to mention it will also be the first time in your life that you feel depression’s nag.

That for the first time in your life, you could go a whole day without a single person noticing you haven’t left your room. That you could walk around a town full of people with cool things to do, but still feel entirely lonely and unenthused.

No one ever tells you that all you will want that first week is a person to eat lunch with or even just someone to talk to for longer than a half second when they ring up your Vitamin Water and turkey sandwich.

No one ever tells you that the full heart and bright spirit you were known for will be dampened by your empty dorm room (your temporary home) silently greeting you after a long day of classes.

I am not trying to freak you out, I promise. But I am trying to make sure you know that college hits hard.

Being away from your friends and your family, even if they weren’t the best, will break your heart in a long and uncomfortable stretch — slowly tearing it in half.

They find new friends, you do too, your family adjusts your house so it can function without you, and all of the sudden, your life is centered on a town you can’t even navigate without Siri’s help.

The name and life you built for yourself before college almost evaporates, and with that comes a terrifying lack of belonging. It’s like the ground has been Photoshopped out from underneath you along with the pimples in your senior photos.

It is so hard to remember the person you were to your friends and your family when everything is now so far from familiar.

But with that struggle comes the opportunity to fight for who you want to be. With the struggle of feeling anchorless comes the chance to really decide where you want to be anchored. With that struggle of being lonely comes the chance to see who you really are when you’re alone.

You will learn to cherish your friends because they will become your family. You will pick them up from the airport or make them soup when they’re sick or cheer them on as they run a marathon.

You will go on road trips with them on the weekends and study for tests you’d rather not take during the week.

You will learn what makes you happy and keeps you happy and leaves you happy, and by doing that you will learn so much about yourself — infinitely more than you could have ever learned in high school.

You will learn what sets your heart on fire and you will learn what is a waste of your time. You will learn how to take care of yourself in the ways that you would expect, like how to do your laundry without forgetting it in the dryer and how to feed yourself three times a day without starving, getting fat or running out of money.

However, you will also learn to take care of yourself emotionally. You will learn how little sleep you can get without wanting to crawl under a rock and cry and how much alone time you need so that you don’t implode.

But, remember to go outside your comfort zone, even if it seems like a daunting task. Reach out to the people you meet, because a lot of the time, they will be just as afraid of the potential for rejection as you are. Seek out involvement, and through that you will begin to plant your roots and find your place.

And at the end of that first year — that hard, painful, uncomfortable freshman year — you will be OK. You will have friends, you will be with your family for the summer, you will have figured out some way to not fail your classes (you might find that once you actually started going to class they weren’t even that hard) and you will be OK.

I have talked to so many of my friends about this and almost all of them, especially the really outgoing, upbeat and enthusiastic ones, found themselves in the thick of a unexpectedly difficult freshman year. They applied to other colleges, thinking that was the problem, or they changed their majors, hoping to find something they felt excited about.

However, at the conclusion of that treacherous first year, we all realized it was our position in time, not the circumstances of it, that made everything harder than we had expected.

So brace yourself for college’s impact, but don’t lose faith that, as that year comes to a close, you will find yourself happier and at home than you had even hoped you’d be. At the end of your freshman year, you will be OK.

You will, I promise.