In honor of being exactly halfway through my college career, and it being freshman acceptance season, I wanted to write about something that has been weighing heavy on my mind lately: my college experience. Since the beginning of high school, I had always dreamed of going off to find a college that would be perfect for my major and simultaneously bring me happiness. Teachers and parents often would tell me that I needed to base my decision on what the university was known for or the graduation rate, while other kids my age would tell me to go to the university that had the best student body or atmosphere.
Now that I have graduated high school, applied for a university and attended it for two years, I have realized the college experience that is shoved in my face by parents, teachers or other kids my age does not exactly represent the type of college experience I was meant to have. When I told my extended family or employer from high school that I was going to be attending Florida State University in a pre-nursing track, the responses I got were not what I had expected. I was told that Florida State is a party school and the students that go there do not value their academics. I was told that I would not be able to balance the social and academic aspects of college life while my major was so grueling. I have come to the realization that nothing I was told about college while being an impressionable freshman was true.
My truth is different than the next student, as every college kid goes down a different path. I’ve found the college experience to be less about the parties I’ve attended and what sorority I am in and more about what I’ve encountered during my four years of personal development into the person I was meant to be. When I think about my college experience, I don’t think about that night out last Thursday. I think about 11:59 p.m. deadlines on just about every professor’s Canvas page, and how I will be lying in bed getting ready to doze off right before I realize there is an eight-page essay due at midnight that I have 23 minutes to write.
I think about how I can’t remember the last time I had a balanced, home-cooked meal because college kids (most of us) don’t cook for ourselves and live off ramen noodles or takeout. I walk through the grocery store past all of the nutritious ingredients and straight into the freezer aisle to pick up my weekly supply of breakfast burritos and frozen pizza. Genuinely couldn’t tell you off the top of my head when the last time I consumed a vegetable was. Maybe sometime in 2019? This seems to be a universal experience in college life and probably how I’ve gained at least fifteen pounds in stressed body weight during my time here.
My college experience consists of getting assigned an 8 a.m. class during the fall or spring and making it to about three of those in the entire semester. Waking up before the sun, pulling myself together in the same outfit I wore yesterday (and the day before that) and then setting out on my journey to hike up the streets of Tallahassee in the blazing Florida heat just to arrive at my class three minutes late looking like I went for a morning swim is a constant routine.
And really thinking back on the past two years, one of the most prominent experiences I can think of is my complete lack of motivation to be physically active. Did I do cross country in high school and run 10 miles for fun every Monday? Yes, I did. Do I now consider it a win if I walk to class rather than park my car the closest it can get to avoid excess energy loss? Also, yes. It is not that I consider myself lazy (even though I probably am), it is that something about stepping foot onto a college campus will quite literally suck every last ounce of energy out of my body.
So, while I was an impressionable freshman trying to formulate the perfect “college experience” for myself through joining a million organizations and clubs on campus, I was quite literally already experiencing all that I needed to by just being enrolled and going to class. When I look back on this period of my life as I get older, I’m not going to remember every party I attended or what my graduating grade point average was. I am going to remember what it felt like to be at a stage of life where I could explore myself, meet the people that made my days move faster, and experience all of the little hiccups that make college into what it is.
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