One day you’re 18 years old, complaining to your parents about how much you can't wait to leave. You think about the newfound freedom that you will soon be given and everything seems exciting. Flash forward a few months and you’re saying goodbye to everything you’ve known your whole life and you’re faced with the reality that your “newfound freedom” is now confined to the very small dimensions of your new room, but still, you are hopeful. Flash forward a few more months and you’re engulfed in anxiety about your future and what lies ahead and all of a sudden you go from being a carefree young adult to having to decide what you want to do with the rest of your life. This is the transition of a lifetime.
For the majority of your young adult life, you dream about college. Your heart skips beats about the idea new faces and places and adventures and you find yourself throwing it in your parents’ faces every chance that you get. Then all of a sudden, you are slammed with the reality of college and living on your own.
Remember all of those times you dreamt about the late nights you’d spend exploring once you moved off, and all of the excitement that you were should you would find? It didn’t take long for you to realize that late nights are spent at the library and napping over textbooks. And as far as exploring and excitement? Well the real journey is trying to find an outlet in the library and exciting is that feeling you get in your stomach when you didn’t fail an assignment as badly as you thought you would.
Remember when the idea of a huge campus was exciting and you thought of the countless new faces you would pass on a daily basis? Now, you groan in pain at the thought of the enormity of your campus as you try your hardest to walk as fast as you possibly can across campus for your next class, all while praying that it isn’t obvious you’re sweating profusely. And thankfully, you are surrounded by thousands of new faces, yet they all look just like yours; sleep deprived, hungry, a little sweaty and trying not to make eye contact. . . just in case you might try to hand them a flyer or some sort.
But what about the freedom? All of that newfound freedom you’ve been craving for years? Well it didn’t take you long to realize that if anything, you’re on more of a leash now than you ever have been. Except now, it’s like your parents are letting you have the slack in the leash that makes you feel independent. . . until you’re reminded by a gentle tug that they’re still in charge of you. “Hey, I’m really sorry but can I possibly just have like $10? Everyone is going out to eat tonight”- you find yourself making calls similar to this one very often.
The truth is that college is great, but it’s also difficult, please don’t think otherwise. I remember being younger and all of the college kids coming home and saying that it’s so easy and the greatest time ever. Now, I’ve learned that even though my suffering seems evident to me, it’s easier to just say it’s all fun than it is to try to explain it to people.
A lot of things aren’t exactly what I thought they would be, yet some things are so much more than I ever dreamed of. College is where you are essentially thrown into the fire, you’re never going to be the same teenage kid that you were in high school, and that’s okay; now you get to be something more, something better. You get to be whatever you want to be.
