Growing up, we are often told that college will be the best four years of our lives.

I don’t think it’s true.

We end up waiting for high school to be done and over with just so we can start a new chapter of our lives, with new friends in new places, at a college hundreds of miles away from the place we call home.

College is exciting and usually very interesting, but it's not forever. It teaches us a lot of what we know. College teaches us about how much we miss our family and those we love, true friends, quality morals, and our own personal values. Those are reasons why I refuse to believe that college will be the best four years of my whole entire life.

If college were the best four years of my life, I would be almost done with the best part of it. As a junior in college, I would hate to think that my life would be over in a little more than a year and a half. This has always driven me nuts. No, random woman working at the grocery store or nosy man sitting next to me in the waiting room at the dentist’s office, college just won’t be the best four years of my life. It's exciting and all, but I have a whole life to look forward to still.

It might have been the best four years of your life, but you made that choice for yourself. Stop telling me that college will be the best years of mine.

I haven’t experienced life after college yet, but I know that it isn't boring. I've seen it unravel right in front of me. There are those who post "Me! Me! Me!" on Facebook (we all do it) and the ones who are too bashful to share their big news, but it leaks anyway. Life doesn’t go downhill and fall into pieces. In fact, life is what you make it, and it requires you putting all of the pieces together. That includes putting pieces back together, even if they have fallen apart.

Sure, every day will be different. It will start to pour right when you’re driving to work, but you left your raincoat and umbrella at home. You will spill red spaghetti sauce all over your favorite white blouse, and you’ll be late to a very important job interview because of unexpected traffic on the highway. The real world can be scary, upsetting, stressful, and frustrating.

The real world islife.

Life is what you make it, right?

It turns out, you can make your own life how you want it.

So go to a city you've never been to and fit in as a local. Sit down in a cafe and try a meal you’ve always sworn you’ve hated but never really had a true bite of.

Go to the bookstore and surround yourself with good books, because books will make you smarter; they’ll make you appreciate people and life as your own true story.

Go back to that cafe another day and go to lunch by yourself just because you can. There's no need to worry about what others will think of you.

Quit your job if it’s not what you’re looking for. Money is something, but it’s not everything.

Branch out from your comfort zone and introduce yourself to someone without the help of social media. You’ll make honest connections that way.

I plan on hating some of my days and loving most of them, because that’s what learning what you love is about. College isn’t the end of an era; it’s the start of a new one.

Enjoy your college years while you still have them, but don’t look at college as the end of your life. It’s only the beginning.