I’ve often heard people claim that college is the best time in a person’s life. After I graduated high school, it was all anyone would say when congratulating me. On cards with giraffes in graduation caps they would write: “Party hard,” “You’re going to have the best time,” “I remember the good old days,” and cliche after cliche.
During my freshman year of college, I still believed this to be true, although I didn’t immediately feel it. I worked hard to try and connect with people—joining organizations, attending student gatherings, reaching out to new people, etc—but it didn’t quite pay off. Even when I formed close relationships with people, our affection faded after a few months and the connections I formed were lost, blending into the background of our student body. Yet, I still didn’t lose all hope for the next three years. Everyone’s freshman year sucks, right? It’s not supposed to be easy right away. For some, it may even take until their junior or sophomore year to get into the groove and meet the people who will be at their graduation party, wedding, baby shower, and so on. I figured it would take time but held out hope that the best years of my life were just ahead and that they depended on the validation of others.
Of course, I was wrong about this. During my sophomore year, I still struggled to make friends and spend quality time in my community of collegiate peers. I still never got invited to parties or hangouts, I wasn’t cast in performances. I didn’t feel chosen and therefore felt unworthy and isolated, lacking a community I had expected college to provide. Soon, I hoped, I would be invited to parties and hangouts, and find that community I had been longing for.
I moved off campus in the fall of my junior year and will not return to dorm living for the rest of my college career. I made this decision reluctantly after coming to terms with the fact that I’d be happier if I separated my ‘home life’ and ‘school life’ from each other. I knew this was the right decision for me but it feels slightly wrong. Maybe I pushed myself out of the campus nest before I was ready. Did leaving mean that I had given up on finding “my people”? Have I given up on assimilating to “college life”, whatever that may be?
Spending some time in my own space has allowed me to reflect. I’ve concluded that no, I haven’t given up. I’m no longer putting the weight of my college years on the backs of others. I’m making peace with the fact that these have not been the best years of my life. They haven’t even been the second or third-best. And that’s okay. Normal, in fact.
I’m not writing this to throw a pity party for myself but rather to acknowledge the fact that college is hard and we can let it be hard. It’s not a four-year-long bender of self-discovery and endless accolades. Sometimes it’s mundane. Sometimes it is just as monotonous as any kind of schooling is. I don’t think I’ll be thirty years old and wishing to be back sharing a bathroom with thirty of my peers, but who knows?
While there are moments that feel lacking, our college years have moments of freedom and fun. It’s taught me so much about who I am and what I want—a safe and welcoming space for me to learn and grow. There’s already so much pressure on people our age to make something of ourselves and savor our lives before we enter the real world. I no longer want to apply that same pressure to myself. I’ll have many more years to grow into myself and many more years to LIVE, the best, worst, and all those glorious days in between. And you will too. If you’re like me, and feel that college has hardly been the best years of your life so far, know you’re not alone and there is so much out there for us, today and beyond.