We’re eighteen years old, responsibility and wisdom are on the tips of our tongues - but we can’t quite think of the word - and we expect everything of the world. We want adventure, excitement, and to even (imagine this!) get a degree while we're at it. Luckily enough for us, modern society has given us the utopia we deserve.

We call it college.

A year ago I put all of my belongings into boxes and bought laundry detergent. I had no idea how to balance a checkbook, treat stains or read a map. But I was independent, I had ambitions, and I was going to take part in a grand cultural extravaganza where footballs and lecture notes fell from the heavens like rain. People were going to tell me about their ideas and listen to mine; we’d grow from each other. We’d grow so high that together, we could turn back to see the grassy plains of existence and possibly save the world.

Finally, I arrived, keeping my independence tucked in my phone case next to my student ID, pulling it out when I ate what I wanted, slept when I wanted and did as much work as I wanted. They say that everything has its price, and I have decided that the price I paid for that freedom - besides ten extra pounds - was the awareness that not all experiences live up to their expectations. Moral of the story: even utopias aren’t quite so, well, "utopic". Glazed with aspirations of intellectuality, I forgot a very important fact: my new classmates weren’t some exotic species I could eventually evolve into. They were just people. Subsequently, the same rules I had already known still applied.

This was the first thing I learned in college.

I expected moderatism and neutrality, but the right and the left were just as belligerent as the political debates they watched so fervently with goals of Making America Great for Them. The depreciation of the arts was a national crisis, not a local one as I had previously believed, and my response to the question, “What’s your major?” was met with scorn more than anything else. Lo and behold, the world was just as frustrating a place despite the inspirational speakers and the Starbuck’s-scented air. And oh-by-the-way, there's no high school class that teaches you how to file your tax returns.

As it turns out, my campus wasn't any kind of haven; it was just a slightly more voluble microcosm of the rest of society with much better ice cream. (Peanut Butter Swirl lovers unite!)

All adversity aside, I engaged in an incredulously new experience where I met truly amazing people to help carry me through the unpredictable course of my lifetime. I learned the difference between a joint-and-several lease and a fixed-term lease. I escaped the barbed wire of my rural town, but left just enough space under the fence for a trip home when I needed the warmth of homemade marinara. But every morning, when I pour the sugar into my French roast, I keep a post-it note in the back of my mind just in case my aspirations clog my intuition.

So yes, college is the best four years of your life, there's no doubt about that, but it’s important to remember that it’s still life. Because expectations are often exaggerations on truths - even those about the grandeur of college.