Everyone always tells you that college will be the best four years of your life. They build up this whole image of partying, having fun, and not having responsibilities but becoming an adult at the same time. College was not the best four years of my life, and that's okay.
The first year of college consists of adapting to life without your parents and family, without people you saw almost every day for 18 years, without any schedule or the friends who you spent your life growing up with. For me, it was beyond hard. I was in a relationship from home that was holding me back and that I was miserable in. I constantly questioned if my major was what I wanted to do and changed it four times in my first year alone. I was immensely home sick and ended my high school relationship in hopes of loving college. Was I having fun with my roommates, going out and partying, and making it look like college was amazing? Yes, and I was having fun, but I felt so alone and empty the whole time.
After much debate, I ended up returning to my school for a second year and during that year, everything seemed okay. I got into a relationship that looked absolutely perfect all around from the outside. I got my grades up and became a book worm instead of a student who was going out and partying every weekend. During this year, I actually started to go home as much as possible. I thought everything was better, but at the end of the year, I realized I was isolating myself from my home friends, from my hobbies and the things that made me, me. I was basically a house wife at the age of 20 and was miserable.
I started my third year of college with that same boyfriend. I told myself that I'd start putting myself out there more and it'd be different, but I started to realize I was even more unhappy than ever. I realized the people I was close with, I didn't really feel much of a connection to. I didn't know what to do other than cut all ties from my college friends and try to be happy on my own. Although this hurt my friendships, I still had my boyfriend, right? At this same time, I got my dream internship and started working a ton, only soon to find out my boyfriend wasn't thrilled that my new happiness was coming from outside our relationship. It was then I realized this: I had been trying to make everyone else around me happy and make everything seem perfect but I needed to be selfish and make myself happy first. After cutting out my friends, moving into a single dorm room and breaking up with my boyfriend, I decided to study abroad in Italy before going into the spring semester of my junior year.
When doing that, I made two of my best friends and really started experiencing college and having fun. The last year and a half of my college experience was amazing. I had my best friends, I was actually having fun and was working my butt off in both internships for my future and in school. I actually did something I never even dreamed of: I graduated cum laude from an amazing university next to my best friends. It was a dream come true and I loved it.
All in all, I had a year and a half of college that I loved and wouldn't trade for the world, but the first two and a half were painful and a growing period and that's okay. Whatever your story is, whatever you're going through at college or if you feel like something is wrong with you because you're not enjoying it as much as people say you should, I'm telling you that you're going to be okay. Not only are you going to be okay, but you're going to have the best years of your life and college does not need to be them.
Don't listen to others. Don't listen to people telling you that something's wrong because you don't love college. College is hard. It's you finding yourself and finding where you belong and what makes you happy and what makes you, you when you have no idea who you even are yet. It's okay to not love these four years, and it's okay to look back at them and not love yourself or love everything you did.
College wasn't the best four years of my life and who's to say that they have to be yours too.
