I always imagined pulling up to my college campus for the first time, ready to unload my bags and start my life--for real. I, along with 15.6 million undergraduate students in the United States, shared a similar idea of being welcomed to the real world after leaving the nest late August. However, after having lived college life for a few days, weeks and eventually months, I realized that college life is nothing like the real world.
College is an amazing experience, and going to a university can set you up with dozens of tools for starting your career, classes that actually get you interested, and a close network of people in the same exact part of their life--likely with a lot of the same goals. These and plenty more factors contribute to many recalling colleges as "the best time of their lives". While college is definitely worth the price we pay, I couldn't help but feel a little weird as the months proceeded. Why was there a random sense of discomfort coming to the surface?
When away at school as a freshman, you're likely living in a dorm room in a community filled with other students living in dorm rooms and the main places you go are lecture halls, classrooms, and on a good day, the gym--all of which are frequented by none other than young adults ages 18-22. The more you walk around campus, the more you forget what it's like to see families, the elderly, and even dogs.
As you build your routine from lecture hall to dining hall to the library, the distance becomes the farthest you've gone from your dorm, when you used to drive fifteen minutes just to get to school. And while you claim you don't miss even a day of working, the numbers of your bank account may tell a different story. Life is different here than you've ever known before, and will definitely be different than the life you will know once you pursue a career. How could you not ask yourself, "Is this really the real world?"
College and the first fifteen years of your life have one major thing in common, you barely have any responsibilities. No, in fifth grade I was not expected to know how to find the reaction order of a chemical reaction by determining absorbency (gross), but I was expected to go to school, hang out with friends, and do my homework. Which, basically, is every college student's routine (perhaps with the addition of alcohol).
Elementary school wasn't strange because chilling out was all you'd ever known. But now, likely most of us college students have experienced the free-will of cars and the discipline of some sort of part time job. When filling our schedules to look good to college admissions, we took on enough responsibilities and went enough places to get a true feel of working with others of all different ages. Maybe we even started working an internship, which smacks you right in the middle of a real life job of your interest.
Sometimes, being on campus feels like you're in your own tiny world, and to be honest, that couldn't be truer. Nowhere else, with the exception of childhood, are you not only allowed, but expected, to study, party, and hang out with your friends without any responsibility of car payments or jobs or even taking your dog out for a walk when you get home. While the lack of other responsibilities can seem a little eerie during your first months, know that all your extra time is meant to be used to join clubs that interest you and ace all of your classes (except for chem, of course, because that's just impossible).
As a rule of thumb, whenever you're wondering what to do with free time because you had no such thing for the past three years of your life, remember that you have four years to focus on yourself, your friendships, and your studies. You should probably just enjoy it without questioning it. The real world is out there somewhere, and while it's not on your college campus, it's likely waiting for you when you get your hands on that diploma (and student loan bills, six months later) and the extra time for partying won't sound so bad after all.
