You can't stop the future. You can't rewind the past.

Move in day freshman year of college was the worst day of my life. I knew that day, and the days leading up to it, that it would be one of the biggest changes of my life, and I have never been very fond of change. I loathe it, I dread it, I hate it. Change is the worst.

Well, that's how I used to feel. I'm still not a huge fan of change, but I've come to appreciate it more than I used to. I now think that, sometimes, change can be good.

When I first got to school, people kept talking about how much I was going to change in the next four years. I would change, people would change, my thoughts and opinions would change, my relationships would change, everything would change. And I didn't want that to happen. I was very happy with the way things were, thank you very much.

We need to stop telling women, "Get a mentor and you will excel." Instead, we need to tell them, "Excel and you will get a mentor."

What a weekend! I'm back from my second trip to NYC for the year, and it was so, so amazing. After attending Her Conference, I'm feeling refreshed, motivated, inspired, and confident.

Her Conference is the annual conference in NYC put on by Her Campus. As you probably know, I am the Editor-in-Chief of the University of Iowa chapter of Her Campus. This year was the fifth annual Her Conference, and I am so glad I went! Four of us from our chapter went, and it was such a great bonding experience for us.

The first event of the weekend was Friday night at Rebecca Minkoff's store in SoHo. At the event we got to mingle with girls from other Her Campus chapters across the country. It was fun to look around the store and chat with the other girls. Then we actually got to meet Rebecca Minkoff! She was so kind and so sweet, and it was a great way to start off the weekend.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

Getting Involved

I joined Her Campus in my first semester of college. I wanted a place where I could write but nothing that would be too rigorous right at the beginning of my college career. I considered writing for The Daily Iowan and even got accepted to work there, but three articles per week seemed like a little too much to jump into at first.

Her Campus seemed like a good place to start out writing, and it also seemed like a good place to meet some awesome girls who shared my passion of writing. So I joined.

At first, it was a little outside of my comfort zone. I was going to meetings with girls who I didn't know and who all seemed older and more experienced than I was. Sure, I had a couple of high school internships on my resume, but these girls were in college, and that just seemed like another whole playing field.