There are many different types of colleges that you can attend: big ones, small ones, state ones or private ones. You will meet different people wherever you go, as well. Some people will have grown up in the suburbs and others are city dwellers, while others still will make the decision to commute and their friends may opt to live on campus. Regardless of where you end up and how you choose to spend the next several years of your life, one thing will be consistent: everyone will tell you that college will be “the best four years of your life.”

Now, I do not want people to misunderstand me; I have absolutely nothing against college, higher education or Fairfield. Fairfield was my top choice three years ago (is it really three years, already?) and I stand by my decision. The University opened up a lot of great opportunities for me and allowed me to tap into my potential as a thinker and writer. So, you should not walk away after reading the next several paragraphs thinking that I dislike college or Fairfield; quite the opposite. However, I do find the mentality that one’s life begins and ends at college to be simplistic and disconcerting.

To expect that college will be the best four years of a person’s life and for that person to believe you is only setting him or her up for a massive disappointment. College, much like life, is messy. You may ace tests, but you may also drift away from the people that you met and thought would be your friends forever. You may find out more about yourself, but you may also have your heart broken, whether intentionally or unintentionally. You may discover your passions, but you may also fail tests in courses that do not pertain to your major, and others that do. Some of these things will happen to you all in your first year, others will stretch over your entire college experience and some may never happen at all. College is a gamble, much like life.

To say that one’s life begins when they walk into their first dormitory would be completely erasing every moment of the last 17, 18 or 19 years of a person’s life that led them to that moment. I hope that your life began before that and that college was simply another exciting adventure that you prepared yourself to take when the time came. We all had lives before going to college, and while those years for some may not be the best, they still hopefully brought you to the place that you want to be. However, if you put absolutely all of your expectations into college allowing you to find the missing pieces that your adolescence could not help you find, then you will more than likely be disappointed. Should you hopefully live a long life, you will still have plenty of pieces to find once you graduate and officially enter the world.

Moreover, you will eventually reach graduation. Diplomas will be received, caps and gowns will be worn, lots of photos will be taken (looking to you, Mom) and we will finally be off to the real world. Except, wait … now what? The supposed best four years of your life are over and now … this is the rest of your life? It does not have to be a bad thing like everyone makes it out to be. Sure, college may be the last time that there is a sense of security. It may also be the last time that you spend any significant period of time at the house that you grew up in with your family. However, your life will hopefully be filled with “best years”, and there will not be any set number of those. If you choose to, you will get married and have children of your own, and those will be some of the best years of your life. You will discover, with any number of obstacles, your dream job and pursue a career that offers you the most fulfillment, and realizing what exactly that is and doing it will be some of the best years of your life. You will lose friends, but with that, will also make new friends and you will experience different stages of your life together, and those will be some of the most difficult, yet best years of your life, and you will not have it any other way.

So, I suppose my point is that college should not be expected to be the best four years of your life, but it can be some of the best years. We, as humans, are living for longer and longer periods of time, so we should embrace that and make the most of it. Otherwise, if you do not allow yourself to realize that more to life awaits you outside of college, then you will spend the rest of your life stuck in a retrospective state, wondering why nothing you do can surpass those “glory days.”