“College will be the best four years of your life!”
My friends, parents and many other people have all told me the same thing. College is where it’s at. It’s the peak of life where your metabolism is fast enough to not have to think twice about the four slices of greasy DHOP at 1 am. The time when you do a questionable amount of keg stands and attend more frat parties than anyone ever should. It’s the time when we learn that Blueberry Smirnoff is actually awful, and Captain Morgan isn’t as fun to hang out with as we think he is. It’s the time for making irreplaceable friends and learning from mistakes.
…Oh, and we also have to pass our classes in order to earn our degrees. That’s important too.
Once my black SUV pulled out from the back driveway at Williamson hall, I knew I was here to have fun, live it up, study hard and not get into too much trouble, because I’ll miss it all when it’s over.
Of course, after two and a half years here, I have my share of unforgettable memories at UNH. I’ve ridden the infamous wildcat, slipped on ice on my way back from Strafford Ave at midnight, and tried just about every type of fries from Kurt’s Lunchbox. I’ve made so many irreplaceable friends who I am confident I will have for the rest of my life, and I wouldn’t trade my time here for the world.
But I don’t want my years in college to be the best years of my life- I want my life to be the best years of my life.
I’ll admit- the real world is a scary place to think about. We need jobs to pay the bills and sustain a lifestyle. We need close friends and partners by our sides, and that’s never a guarantee. We get older, have pressures to start a family and buy a house and take whatever other steps come along on our journey. These are all scary things, but things we are more capable of than we think.
So yes, the real world can be scary, but want to know what’s scarier? College. College is where we make our mistakes and learn from them, but these mistakes can change our lives, break our hearts, and shift our perspectives. Picking ourselves up after a life-lesson-learning mistake is one of the most difficult things we have to do during our college years. It sounds glamorous to say that we learn from our mistakes and can move past them, but it’s not always as easy as it sounds. Another scary thing to consider in college is college itself. Passing classes to get degrees towards our future puts a lot of pressure on us students. The “C’s Get Degrees” mentality will only get you so far in your academic career. And then there’s the unspoken pressure of making these four years your best, when they don’t have to be. If we constantly check our Instagrams and see that everyone is out having fun at a different party or enjoying the weather at a local coffee shop while you’re stuck in the library, we put more pressure on ourselves to make the best of our time.
Many people cry on graduation, saying the good times are over and now they have to start their lives- get a job, find a husband, start a family, do whatever comes next. Some might continue on to other schools and some might move back home, but whatever is coming, they think, is going to be impossibly worse than their lives at college that they are leaving behind. And I’ll admit, I’ll be crying too, but not because the best is over, but because the best is yet to come.
Inspired by Teresa Demore, a high school friend who is going to have a great life through college and beyond.