As someone who has just started her college journey, I’ve got to say, it’s just as good as the movies made it seem. I mean, I’ve got something going on every day, and there’s always something or someone new to see or meet. I’ve even got my own little college soundtrack, Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. Granted, it’s also the album of the moment for a few of my other friends, something that I didn’t think too much about. After all, it’s a super good album (easily one of my top five favorite albums ever), and the songs on the tracklist are only growing in popularity thanks to social media and her ongoing tour.Â
However, the other day, I started to dwell more on the thought of why it seemed to resonate with my friends and me. I think it started when I had a conversation with a couple of my friends about classes, and the way they talked about their academic burdens made me wonder if I wasn’t doing enough. After all, from their perspectives, I had so much time to attend pop-ups and have a social life and go home on the weekends. Surely, that means that I haven’t been as thorough with my post-labs as I should have been or haven’t studied nearly enough for all of my exams? Or that I haven’t been working hard enough to fill up my resume and get to where I need to be at the rapidly approaching deadlines? I mean my friends and I are all ambitious people with big expectations and even grander dreams that are taking on mentally taxing workloads (shoutout to all the fellow STEM girls!), so why does it feel like I’m starting to fall behind? What’s wrong with me?
This line of thinking had me wondering, maybe everyone feels something like that? Maybe the people I interact with on a daily basis have both a public persona and a life that they keep for themselves. I would argue that the college experience is like a coin. There are two sides to that coin: the obverse, where everything is sunshine and rainbows, and the reverse, where I’m drowning in an ocean of stress. I just keep one half of that coin on top and keep the other face down. No matter what, though, both sides of the coin exist at the same time, even if only one of them is visible to other people. As much as Olivia Rodrigo’s album explores relationships and how people automatically assume that all is well when that very well may not be the case, I would argue that it can also apply to other situations, which is why it feels so relatable to me and my friends. You seem pretty sad for a girl so in love could just as easily become “You seem pretty stressed for a girl not doing much,” or “You seem pretty tired for someone who has time to get sleep,” or even “You seem pretty scared for someone with nothing to lose.”
People tend to measure others’ stress by what they can see on the outside, when in reality, everyone has their own way of managing their worries. Just because you can’t see someone’s burdens doesn’t mean they don’t exist or affect them any less, something that’s become increasingly evident to me since starting college. I think you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love acknowledges that it’s OK to look great on the surface and not feel the need to provide justification for your worries, which is why it feels relatable to so many young women like myself. The only cure we need is supportive friends and a really good soundtrack.Â