College has never totally been my thing. In high school I had straight-A’s, a nearly perfect GPA, I was an athlete, I was involved in many clubs, I barely had time to sleep, and I loved it. That all changed when I got to college. I was so burned out, and I had even less time to sleep, between studying, sports practices, and having a social life. My freshman year, an upperclassman told me “In college, we all have to choose two out of three things: School, a social life, and sleep. And most of us choose to sacrifice sleep for the other two.” I’ve found this statement to be scarily true, as well as simply scary. I don’t like the college mentality that it’s good to be so busy that there is no time to sleep (have you read the numerous studies about how less than 7-8 hours of sleep a night shortens your life span, slows down your brain, causes weight gain and about a billion other things?), the never ending school work-seriously, is there ever a break?-and that in order to have a social life you have to accept being tired, behind on school work, and stressed out all the time.
So why go to college? Because there are limited other options. For me, the careers I’m interested in require a college degree. In fact, the wage difference between college graduates and non-graduates is significant enough that unfortunately, it doesn’t make sense not to go to college. Annoyingly, colleges draw out education into four years so they can make more money off of us. Why do we need to take multiple courses that are not related to our majors? If I could take only major classes to get my bachelor’s degree I could have been out of college in two years. TWO YEARS! Instead, there are extra classes that pretty much every college makes you take so you’re a “well-rounded” student, but in reality are just there to force students to take longer to finish school.
Of course, college isn’t all bad. Generally, most people are not yet entirely financially independent from their parents, you live around your friends, and there are plenty of social activities to be involved in. But what about the people like me, probably a smaller section of the population, but still there, who are counting down the days until they can finally get out of here? Not because it’s a bad place, because it’s not, but because this whole higher education thing has dragged on for too long. Because the idea of starting a real career, of being financially independent, of never having to do an assignment for a class that bores me to tears again is so exciting. Because for me, college has not been the best four years of my life that I was promised by all of the pro-college propaganda my senior year of high school. Instead it’s been almost four years of not being able to wait to be done. It’s been almost four years of crazy amounts of stress, of mental breakdowns, and countdown apps tracking the days until the next break. Sure, there have been great parts, great friends and great memories; there always are, even in the things we don’t like. But it’s time for it to be over. I’ve got two more semesters to go until I’m finished, and when I finally get my diploma, and I’m going to be so ready to graduate and start real life.