News flash: it’s okay not to be happy all the time. Yes, college kids, I’m talking to you.
We’re all under this pressure to be extraordinarily happy in college, because everyone tells us these are the best four years of our lives. Freshman year everyone wants to pretend they’re having the best time, and social media makes it easy. You come home fall break and are asked, “How’s college? Are you loving it?!” more times than you can count, and everyone anticipates an overjoyed “YES!” But that would be a lie.
Odds are you’ve just left your home friends and are trying to find your place at an enormous school. And when you’re not as happy as all of your friends’ Instagrams, Snapchats, and new profile pictures make it seem like they are, you start to get lonely. You can’t figure out why you aren’t as comfortable and in love with your school as everyone else seems to be. You even start to question your decision.
Personally, I lucked out. I was happy the day I stepped foot on this campus. Not one single call home crying. I loved Michigan, I loved my friends, I loved Ann Arbor, I loved it all. I was on top of the world. Until my sophomore year.
My sophomore year of college I learned what it feels like to lose someone I loved. Someone I relied on. Someone I cared about and who was very near and dear to my heart. And I learned what it was like to pretend to be happy when I just wasn’t.
I still loved Michigan, still loved my friends, still loved Ann Arbor. But “happy” was no longer a word I would use to describe myself. I was overwhelmed with the weight of my friends’ pain, and with the thought that bad things could happen to young people – especially in a time that’s supposed to be so amazing. I put on a “happy” front, sucked it up, and continued to Instagram, Snapchat, and post pictures on Facebook as if I was the happiest human being on the face of the planet. But that didn’t make all the anger and sadness go away.
Now here I sit, a little over a year later, and I look back and wonder: why did I feel like I needed to pretend to be happy? Why does everyone feel that pressure in college? And you know what? The truth of the matter is, we don’t need to pretend to be happy. That’s the problem with mental health on college campuses: we all know it exists, and we all know that it’s a problem, but nobody ever wants to be the person who’s sick, who’s sad, who’s depressed.
But accepting that you’re sad and not trying to be happy all the time is healthy. It’s a good thing. You can’t overcome anything until you’ve accepted it and sought help from your friends, peers, parents, teachers, professionals, and more – until you’ve learned to appreciate the good things in your life that can outweigh the bad. So many people hide behind a smile and push their feelings down until they eventually can’t ignore them anymore and everything seems much worse than it really is.
Yes, college may be the best four years of our lives, but just because we’re in college doesn’t mean life stops happening. Sometimes really awful things happen during those four years. People still pass away, get diagnosed with cancer, divorced, etc. Life happens – to everyone. Everyone you walk by on your way to class has their own stuff to deal with – nobody has a flawless four years. But those four years can still be the best, if you accept the bad with the good.
So if you get anything out of this rant, it’s that you shouldn’t be afraid to be who you are. To be happy, excited, angry, nervous, stressed, giddy, silly, or sad. We’re only human, and we can only handle so much, so don’t be afraid to show it. If you open up to your college friends, other people will follow suit, and being sad during the “best four years of your life” will start to lose its stigma. Yes, this takes a lot of courage, but one person’s courage can go a long way, and then everyone can realistically enjoy their college – or life – experiences.