There are some things that you just expect when you're a college student. For example, every time you run into any family member or acquaintance they usually ask the dreaded question, "How's college?"
And if you're anything like me, I bet a thousand different responses go through your heard each time someone asks you that very question.
"It's great!"
"Well I hate my roommate so if that tells you how my year's going.."
"I hate it!"
"It's fine! I'm still figuring it out."
"Well my professor completely ripped apart my essay and told me I should rewrite it so there's that."
"I have a love-hate relationship with the people!"
"It's OK!"
"College is so much better/worse than high school."
"It's good!"
Now I know that all these statements vary to different extremes, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are infinite ways to answer that question. I don't know if this is true for you, but for me, not a single one of those answers ever really seems like the right answer I'm looking for.
The truth of the matter is that college is just hard.
I feel like our society glamorizes college in so many instances. We get this idea that there is such a thing as the "perfect college experience."
In the movies, the "perfect college experience" is all about the social life. You see all these parties and social functions on television, and you come to the conclusion that that's what college is like. By focusing on these societal ideals, we get this idea that college is just one big social circle. These movies tend to leave out important aspects such as the actual education part: your classes.
College isn't like the movies — it's real. The movies don't tell you how hard classes can be, how frustrating it can be to try to make new friends or even feel accepted in this new alternate world.
In reality, the minute you arrive on campus, you're immediately thrown into this time warp where you are expected to do everything you did in high school at a faster rate, but with less sleep.
In high school, you wrote papers, read textbooks, played a sport, participated in a club, possibly worked for some organization, and even maybe volunteered. Now, in college, you're expected to do all that within the span of a week and maintain a constant social life with those around you.
If all this wasn't hard enough, now you have to balance your college life with your home life. Sometimes it feels like you're living two separate lives, so when someone asks, "How's college?" it can be hard to find one set answer because there are pros and cons to everything.
Not only that, it can be really hard to remember why you want to be at college when the comfort of your home is tempting ... especially when you feel like things at college aren't going the way you expected them too.
That's my point. You shouldn't expect anything about the college experience because it's different for each person.
Just follow your heart and keep your head up. Trust yourself and don't fall for expectations because expectations are meant to be broken.
