We often hear the negatives about college. How we pull all-nighters to finish assignments on time, how we are all extremely broke, how tired we are, how we never have any time outside of classes and work, how much debt we are in, and the list could go on and on. It is commonly said that the college years are the best years of one’s life and to that I’ve heard my friends and classmates say otherwise. What I don’t think anyone ever hears is a genuine thank you to our college years.

To piggyback on the sentiment that the college years are the best years of your life, we should thank college for being the time when we can make mistakes. Sure we are paying thousands to tens of thousands of dollars and it’s expensive to make these mistakes, however, without these errors, we wouldn’t be human. Our time in college is when it’s okay to learn that Wednesday night parties are a bad idea. These experiences are what better us for futures in the workplace. Maybe they are things we have all personally experienced but rather roommates, classmates, and friends have made these errors. Regardless you cannot put a value to these life lessons.

Additionally, your college years are a time for opening up to new opinions and schools of thought. I grew up in a small-ish town (about eighteen thousand, to put it into perspective) and attended a private school that was just shy of having one hundred kindergarteners to high school seniors, and going to college that has more students than my hometown has residents has made me realize how different people really can be. I have seen different political views than those typically represented by my small town. I have seen dreadlocks and Birkenstocks to cowboy hats and boots as normal fashions. I have met people with amazing military backgrounds to people who have been knocked down by life and decided to start over and earn a degree in their forties, fifties, and even sixties. Without a college experience, my mind would have probably never opened up to the differences in views and people in the world.

We can thank college for actually educating us. High school educations leave a lot of gaps to fill. I wouldn’t actually know how to balance books and budget money without the couple weeks of accounting I have under my belt already. Those general education classes that sound like a total waste of money can actually give you more of education in a short, fifteen week semester, than four years of high school. You wouldn’t believe how much “The History of Rock and Roll” actually taught me about United States History. The same goes for “Media History and Literacy”. Maybe I’m just a history geek, but I have actually adored what those classes have taught me that I wouldn’t have known otherwise.

Finally, we should thank college for showing us real friends. We all joke about how going home means you’ll make plans with all your old high school friends that never happen. I’ve come to realize that this showed me that those friends aren’t the greatest friends in the world. After spending the majority of the summer before our freshman years saying how much we will miss them, we actually don’t miss them as much as we thought. Sure we care about them and would be there in a heartbeat for them if they needed, it just isn’t the same as it was before. This is because we now have friends that have seen us at lower points than our high school friends have and higher points than them also. They also hold some of your best memories and when you spend the majority of your time with them all school year long, there isn’t anyone else you’d rather be with.

So in just a few hundred short words, that is why I think we should all appreciate college for more than just being the most soul sucking times of our lives.