Some people say that in order to have the full college experience, you need to do more than attend classes, join clubs, and graduate.

You need to live in a dorm, with roommates, and on your own for the first time. That you need to experience campus life and, to some extent, greek life. Late nights, crazy parties, and the flawed but romanticised experience of reckless youth making a slew of dumb mistakes to learn from in the maturity process of becoming an adult. Then you get old and reunite with your old colleagues for special occasions to tell funny stories of the glory days.

Well for my college life, for better or worse, I didn’t have any interest in that endeavor. Part of me wanted to. For years, I fantasized about going to college and gaining freedom from adult supervision. But when I was finally there, I had no clue what to do and how to get to that fun side of college. In the short sample size I got out of campus life, I wanted nothing more than crawl back to the comfort of what was before. Maybe that’s human nature, as people that yearn for the next phase of their lives don’t realize how difficult it is and then wish to relive the simpler times from before.

After high school, I was accepted to Penn State and to attend two years at the Altoona campus and another two years at the main campus. Consequently, I spent my entire freshman with a roommate but I remember almost nothing from that year. It was a combination of trying to figure out what I wanted to do as a student and not having nor applying social skills to establish any bonds that made me want to stay. When the year was over it was almost like I was never there because I did almost nothing and had no idea what I was doing.

So after an uneventful year living abroad, I transferred to the Penn State Brandywine campus. It was the best decision I made in my educational career. The Brandywine campus is very small for a college campus, there were no dorms at the time and only four buildings but I found it as a perfect scenario. I was now a big fish in a small pond and got more comfortable interacting with other students and teachers. I attended international trips to Greece and Paris. Was more involved in campus activities and events and found some passion in writing for clubs like the Newspaper and Literary Magazine. I went from a struggling student to a four-year graduate and did not transfer to University Park.

To those people who still believe that you have to live on campus and have a greek life to get the full college experience, I understand your perspective, but I don’t care. I was not made for that world, and I had a better college experience commuting than I would have if I did live on campus all four years.

Even though I passed on my chance to experience full independence at college, I still know that I must learn how live on my own soon. I’m inevitably going to have to get used to living on my own for the rest of my life. When I do go back on my own in the world, however, I’ll take my Altoona year as a cautionary tale for what went wrong there, and what I should do next time on my own.

It has now been two years since I graduated college. So looking back, do I regret not having much of a social life as a student? Nope. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t spend all four years as a commuter.