As a highschooler, I loved movies like Spring Breakers, Pitch Perfect, and Legally Blonde. These movies led me to believe I knew exactly what I was getting myself into with college: parties, hookups, club involvement, and perfect grades. But, boy was I wrong.
Allow me to share everything I had wrong about the college experience, with no thanks to these blockbuster movies.
- “Everyone is looking for friends”
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This is true to a certain extent … until it’s week two after move in and everyone is in established groups that they stumbled upon in the elevator.
Groups become so close so quickly that the idea of letting new friends in is almost as bad as the idea of the group breaking apart. Spoiler alert: most of them do. The best kind of friends are the ones you find on a whim. For example, my best friend, who I didn’t know existed during my first semester, was someone I met over YikYak. Yep. The anonymous confession app.
I posted a message asking if any freshman girls wanted to get dinner at our dorm’s dining hall, and out of all the upvotes I received, I only got one reply, and it was her! I got lucky that among all the people not looking for friends, I found the one diamond that was.
- “If you’re not partying, you’re not getting the college experience”
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I think this might be the broadest misconception about college to date. I came to college worried that my limited experience didn’t prepare me for picturesque nights at clubs and frats. However, after a semester of going out twice a week and feeling gross afterward, I learned that going out just wasn’t for me.
Why should I have to purchase a specific pair of sneakers I don’t mind getting covered in mud? Why should I have to be worried about getting some sort of toxin dropped in my red solo cup? And most importantly, why should I have to limit my dancing so a guy doesn’t take it as an open invitation to “dance” with me?
I am nearly four semesters out from my partying days and couldn’t be happier to have left them in the past. I much prefer this college experience to that one.
- “College is easier than high school”
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Maybe this misconception has more to do with the specific college I selected, or the helpful hands I had from teachers in high school. Either way, college academics have consumed me with dread, stress, and worry for my future like high school academics never could.
Maybe it comes from the reality that what I’m studying now will predict my future professional success, or from my inability to submit anything less than perfection, but for me, college has most definitely not been easier than high school.
Hopefully my misconceptions can inform you of what the “real” college experience is for so many students. I could have saved myself a lot of the time, energy, tears, confusion, and embarrassment if I hadn’t been focused on fulfilling what I thought was expected of me when I arrived at Boston University.