Starting college holds many expectations. You expect to stay up all night preparing for tests and playing silly games with your dorm friends. You'll get homesick once or twice. You expect to find the best friends ever who your kids would call aunt and uncle. You expect to go to a few parties and evade the RAs. You expect to either love your roommate and share clothes with her or hate her and end up switching rooms. College classes will be hard, the person you're supposed to marry will live down the hall and when you get an apartment off campus it will be the greatest experience ever. It happens in the movies, right? With so many articles and stories out there about the "college experience," what happens if all your expectations fall through?

People say college is supposed to be the best four years of your life. That's a lot for it to live up to. So no wonder there's so many expectations surrounding it. My college experience hasn't turned out like I expected. I'm not best friends with the first people I met. In fact, most of them I didn't meet until at least a couple months into school. My roommate and I didn't become best friends nor did we hate each other so much one of us had to move. We coexisted and didn't even say hi to one another. I went to a few parties, and while some of my friends loved it and wanted to go out every weekend, I got tired of that scene quickly. I didn't get homesick at all, and I ended up dating someone long distance instead of someone from my classes or down the hall. And getting an apartment off-campus? It's been a lonely struggle.

Despite my expectations not turning out, I've made so many great memories at college. Instead of parties that I don't half remember, there are countless "Friends" marathons that took place until 2 a.m. There were Saturday afternoon beach trips and windy camping adventures. So many of my favorite memories happened because I stopped expecting college to be a certain way and just lived it. I fell in love, I learned how even more independent I am than I thought I was, I discovered I can watch scary movies when I'm with the right people and some of those things would have never happened if my expectations of college didn't fall through.

College is different for everybody. I've learned that the last two years. One person could be loving it, another hating it, and another doing a completely different experience like online school. The expectations for college shouldn't be based on movies or other people's experiences. Just expect to live in the moment and have fun.