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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

To all the college freshmen out there, I want to say, happy first days of school.

You probably had lots of daydreams about this moment.

The football games, the roommate who'd become your best friend,

the hotties you'd meet an econ 101 or maybe in your dorm, and the freedom, right?

Finally, you're on your own, making your own choices.

I hope it's like that for y'all. I really do. But to be honest, it wasn't for me. At least not right away. I cried buckets, rivers even, when my parents dropped me off at school, despite thinking I was so ready to be away from them. Those first few weeks, I wandered around campus aimlessly, circled the weekends on my calendar that I'd get to go home, and sat on a bench outside my freshman dorm having distraught

phone conversations with my high school friends about how homesick I was. The folks in my dorm,

who I would later become friends with, thank God, started calling it the sad bench. I tell you this

because I want you to know that if you're feeling any of these things, you are so, so not alone.

Also, while college does offer a lot of fun and a lot of freedom because you're technically an adult now and maybe living on your own for the first time,

it also comes with the realization that you're technically an adult now and you're on your own for the first

time. If you weren't doing this already, you'll likely have to do your own laundry and make sure

you eat and get yourself to class and start paying for stuff. You are now financially responsible

for yourself. That includes whatever debt you've just taken on. There's a lack of

support for 18-year-olds who are now legal adults and can sign on the dotted line for debt with

little to no support in helping you understand the ramifications of what you're doing.

This is Janelli Espinal, author of the book Mind Your Money, and host of the Marketplace podcast

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