For many people, college years are those wonderful few years when you start to find yourself, understand who you want to be, but for me, I have begun to realize that college is just a four-year long identity crisis. I mean sure, I am only halfway through, but at this rate, I am beginning to worry that I will be a college graduate with no understanding about myself, my place in the world, or how I expect to contribute to society.
It all starts in your freshman year. New to campus, unsure of what you want to show as your college personality. Sure, you want to “be yourself”, but what does that mean, or what does that look like? You want to just be comfortable with being yourself, but it’s a little hard to do when you meet your roommates and potential new friends and all you can do is wonder whether or not they like you, or what they are thinking of you. Not only did I have to do this freshman year, but, as any other transfer student knows, I had to start over again at a new school.
I spent the first two years of college constantly wondering these things and questioning why people didn’t seem to like me or why I just didn’t feel like I was “fitting in” with anyone. When this happens, it just seems like the only thing to do is to just try to adapt and change to be like those around you. Changing our clothes, changing our language, changing our morals, to satisfy this need to be liked by others and by ourselves.
What about choosing a major? At the age of eighteen, just starting college, my pre-frontal cortex isn’t even close to being developed, so how do you expect me to choose the major and career that will last me for the next few decades? I chose my major based on what I thought I saw myself doing and what I assumed fit my personality perfectly. I know I am not alone in the fact that I have changed my major since starting school, and I blame it on the fact that I have no idea who I am, much less who I want to be.
Am I happy with the person that I am becoming? I ask myself this question on a daily basis, and, to be honest, I am not sure that I can truthfully answer yes. I feel like I have compromised my entire being in order to fit what society expects, what my family expects, what my peers, expect, what I expect. I do not know who I am. I feel like I will never know. I used to tell people with confidence that I am a Christian. I am a daughter and sister that my family are proud of. I am going to be a doctor. Since starting college, I have begun to doubt, or have completely changed every one of these statements. My faith is shaken. I don’t know if anyone is proud of me. I am no longer going to medical school.
It’s a scary reality when everything you planned for your life, or everything that has been the foundation for your life completely crumbled in what are arguably the most impressionable and critical years of anybody’s life. We all know the friends that graduate without any sort of plan, not for lack of effort, but simply because, like me, they just aren’t sure about the direction that their lives are taking. I can only imagine in two years that I will be the same. I have an abstract idea of what I want from my life, but I don’t think I will have a clear idea after these long and confusing four years.
I know that this monologue seems very disjointed - like a stream of consciousness - but this is how I feel about my life. Everything is out of place because I don't know the proper place for anything in my life. Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not depressed or dissatisfied with my life, I simply feel that this a confusing time in my life, and I don’t have any idea on how to find my way though this to find myself. Maybe one day I will figure out who I am, or what I was meant to be or do, but, for me, college just seems like it isn’t that time, and I just have to be okay with that.
