It is an age old cliché that the roughly four years a person attends college, or even the four they attend high school, will be the best four of their life. Adults tend to say this with starry eyes and nostalgic smiles. It is often uttered by well-intentioned relatives, right after they are done berating you with questions. They mean well, but setting the expectation that you are entering the best time of your life is only setting you up for disappointment.
I do not deny that college can be an amazing time. It is full of new found freedom, includes a flexible schedule, and it is rife with new friends and experiences. However, a traditional college graduate is roughly only twenty-two years old, which paints a pretty depressing picture for the next several decades of their life. It begs the question, "Where is the excitement in new romances, traveling the world, owning a home, starting a career and possibly a family?" It makes people believe that the best of their life is behind them when they are not even 25.
Not every person attends college, and there are many who obtain a college education through a non-traditional route. Did they really miss out on the best four years of their entire lives? I would hope that they would argue they have found plenty of happiness elsewhere. Perhaps, the people that suffer the most through this mantra are the ones who experience this entrance into adulthood during a time of darkness. There are many college aged individuals who suffer from anxiety and depression. There are those who are slow to make friends or find a group where they fit in. Many people experience loss or trauma in life, and on top of all of this, the new work load that comes with higher education can be extremely stressful. When you are being pressured into making college the best four years of your life, it can add a whole new layer of stress if life does not seem perfect.
The truth is, life is never perfect. It has plenty of ups and downs, but once we make it through these milestones, we tend to forget all of the fear and stress we experienced going through them. It is so easy to look back and describe how wonderful things used to be compared the stress and monotony of today, but the reality is never as perfect as the memory makes it out to be. I’m not saying young adults shouldn’t enjoy their time in college, but don’t enjoy it artificially. Enjoy the times that are wonderful, but don’t feel stressed that life can make you so stressed—even if you are only a college student. If college is not everything it was cracked up to be, that is fine; there is always the next decade or the decade after that. It is perfectly okay to be excited for the chapters in your life that follow your college experience, because they might be even better than you imagined.
