College is best described as a trial run on adulthood. College students are in a sort of pre-adulthood limbo, where we are technically adults but have no clue how to handle adult situations. College provides the opportunity to take the reins and get a grip on your adult life.
College forces responsibility on students. Mommy and Daddy can’t call up your teacher to let them know you’re staying home today. It’s in your hands to notify your professor if you really need to miss class, and missing class too many times just isn’t worth it anymore. For the most part, college students actually realize the significance in their classes (at least the ones pertinent to their majors) and responsibly attend them. Plus you actually begin to enjoy them (no more common core)!
Dorming at college adds more fuel to the grow-up-already fire. You come to learn how to live on your own, but you do usually have the buffer of a roommate. This means keeping your space clean, respecting the other individuals with whom you share a room with, and learning how to feed yourself. While dorming probably reinforces the more boring, basic aspects of adulthood, but there are still incredibly important lessons to learn.
The relationships that you make in college also provide the opportunity for growth. It’s around this time where you start to get tired of the drama of friendships and realize the communication is vitally important to healthy connections. You can start identifying toxic friendships and learn how to form strong, life-lasting ones. Romantic relationships also push us to grow up. If a relationship is going to last, it requires respect and trust, two very adult concepts that often get overlooked by children.
The way you deal with mistakes in college is perhaps the single most defining thing about your adulthood. You gain maturity when you can own up to a mistake and work to fix it, not when you run and hide and wait for someone else to clean up your mess. Unfortunately, you will make mistakes in your college years. When you recognize that failure`is more a reason to keep going than to stop, you’ve really grown up.
Ultimately however, you get out of the college experience what you put into it. The college years provide an opportunity for growth, but do not guarantee it. Unfortunately, it is entirely possible to go through these four years remaining the jerkiest of babies on the face of the Earth. Only if you rise to the occasion will it pay off in the end. Your college years are when you’re technically an adult, but still allowed to mess up. College is trial-and-error, and no matter how many errors you make, so long as you try, you’ll figure it out eventually.