There's a widespread cliche that college is going to be the best four years of your life. At my graduation party, well-meaning family and friends relived their glory days, getting me so excited for the perfection that would be college. I couldn't wait to go to the perfect school with my perfect friends and live a perfect life.

But then, it wasn't.

I wasn't sure how I fit in or who I was or what I wanted. I didn't seem to be making friends with quite the same ease as everyone else. Classes were hard, and I had no idea how to even go about studying for things. And then, to top it all off, I was hospitalized right after spring break for the better part of two weeks with extreme difficulty breathing. Freshman year kind of sucked.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love my school. I love my friends and my classes and the opportunities and experiences that I've had. College is so great. But sometimes it's not. In the midst of the John Green craze, where everyone was obsessed with "Okay? Okay," I didn't know how to say that I wasn't OK. I rationalized to myself that it was fine, I just hadn't found my stride. Sophomore year would be better.

Then sophomore year happened. And sometime in the early fall this past year, I finally hit what my breaking point. I had been faced with a slew of hurdles — medical, scholastic, emotional, and otherwise — over the past year and a half, and like any uncoordinated, although fairly competitive person, I'd tried to go full force over them and just ended up flat on my face. Curled into a ball, sobbing on my roommate's bed, I picked up my phone and called my dad. Over the course of a five-minute voicemail, three minutes of which consisted solely of me crying, I told him I'd had enough. That I'd tried being an adult, didn't like it, and wanted to come home. Not just for the weekend, but I wanted to drop out of college and have him make all the decisions for me again. Slightly hysterical, overwhelmed, and absolutely exhausted, I just cried into the phone.

I was tired and stressed, but more than that, I just felt betrayed. All my life, through pop culture and stories from people I knew, college was portrayed as this oasis in life where everyone was in the best shape of their lives and had the best time of their lives with the best people in their lives. It was supposed to be effortless and more like a fairy tale than reality.

Looking around, my friends both at Furman and across the country seemed to be having this fairy-tale experience. They were involved and happy and so excited just to be living their lives. I started to wonder if it was my fault, if I was defective. Why wasn't my experience the same as or as good as that of literally every person I talked to? Was I doing something wrong? Was I the something that was wrong?

I expected college to be fairy-tale perfect and felt lied to, betrayed when it wasn't. However, I've learned a lesson from that. My experience may not have been perfect, but it was real. I'm still trying to figure out who I am and what I want. All of my experiences, both good and bad, have helped me figure out parts of that. I'm a no-longer-a-child, not-quite-a-grown-up-yet adult. College is meant for learning, and I've learned more about myself and my world in the past two years than I could have ever hoped or dreamed.

College won't be the best four years of my life, but that's OK. I don't want it to be.