They encourage this claim all the time, but yes, the four years of college for a few of the best years of your life. These will also be a few of the most heart-wrenching, strength-testing, emotional, stressful, crazy, scary, different four years of your life.
With that being said, it is crucial you spend it with the right people. Most people find that they start to notice the biggest changes within themselves in college and along the way, begin to find themselves.
During this process, who you decide to surround yourself with matters, it really does. Ever catch yourself using the same slang as your best friend? Or notice an alteration to your viewpoint on certain things becoming similar to the mindset of those you spend most of your time with? These are only a few examples of how the type of friends we choose in college affect us and our growth.
I'm telling you: friends in college will become your family. Honestly, it’s kind of inevitable for them not to be. You eat with them, you live at most five minutes away from them, you spend your free time together, they’ll come in your room uninvited, borrow your clothes, drive you crazy, cry with you, cuddle with you... They are stuck with you, and you with them, so why wouldn’t you want to find the best people possible to waste your time with?
From a personal stance, I know my standards for what it means to be a friend has gone up tremendously since my first three years of high school back when I just had leisure friends and did not understand that it was about quality NOT quantity. Nor did I understand that beyond quantity, I expected everyone to put in what I put out, which is not a rational way to go about a friendship.
Most of us tend to expect a lot out of people, especially if you put so much time and effort into one in particular yourself, but the sad truth is, not everyone has the same heart or the same capability to give as much as you do, but this DOES NOT mean hide away and become closed off. This rather means to find people your speed, love them hard, do not expect a lot, and do not trust right away, but learn to trust them if they give you a reason to.
You are going to meet a ton of people in college and it will be overwhelming and exhilarating, and you’ll find yourself so caught up in certain people that may end up letting you down and eventually showing their true colors, but you know what? We are young and besides the fact that we’re in the process of learning who we are and what we want for ourselves, we are going to be disappointed countless of times throughout our lives and that is okay!
You have to meet every person with an open mind and open heart, take note of the mistakes they or even you make during the friendships to avoid it in someone else, take note of the type of people that make you feel happy to be alive even when you’re just sitting together squished up in a dorm room laughing.
Look for the best in people but never settle for anyone who EVER belittles you, makes you feel uncomfortable, or makes fun of other people. In college everyone is just doing their own thing and trying to make the stress of classes a little easier with the help of some great friends, there is no need for trash talking, find people who can talk for hours about just anything, people who make you forget to look at your phone, people who want their friends to be your friends because they just love you, the kind of people who are trying to be the best version of themselves and push you to do the same.
And always know that these four years are all about the experience. You are going to lose a friend you could’ve almost imagined being at your wedding and at some point you are going to question a friend’s intentions that you once thought was genuine, but that’s life; You win some and you lose some, but make sure you take something out of every friendship you go through and use that you help better you as a friend and help you understand yourself as a person.
So I guess the question is, were they right? Are the four years of college really some of the best years of our lives? The answer to that is; you decide.