Growing up I always heard that college would be the time of my life. When I was a senior in high school I was excited to start applying to colleges. I was excited to start a new life for myself and to head off to make a name for myself. I knew I would be homesick so I applied close to home. My top choice was the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF), a small liberal arts college just 40 minutes from my hometown. I applied for their Creative Writing program, sending them a 22-page story I had written in hopes that it would impress whoever read it enough to let me in the program. To my surprise, I received a phone call directly from the Creative Writing department telling me they had accepted me into the program, but that the school hadn’t accepted me yet. It was weird to be accepted to a program and not to a school. A week letter I got my acceptance letter and I was so excited to start a new journey.
However, as the weeks of my senior year of high school passed on I slowly realized that all my friends were going in the opposite direction as me and that instead of seeing each other every day we would be nearly two hours apart. Not one of my closest friends were going to UMF and that was where things started getting rocky for me. When it finally became time to find out who my roommate was I found out it wasn’t even another freshman, but a girl a year ahead of me, and that I was being put in the one dorm I requested not to be put in. The all girls dorm. I started to stress out more. Until I found out a girl I had been friends with in high school who was a year older than me had a free spot in her room, a room in the dorm I had wanted to be in. I immediately contacted her and set up for us to live together. Things were back on track.
The summer before college I had taken part in a week-long program where freshman would come to campus for a week to live there and take a short class. My roommate was a girl who was the opposite of me. Incredibly pretty, athletic and someone who made friends so easily. She tried so hard to help me fit in with the group of friends she already had, but it just didn’t work out. She even asked if I wanted to be roommates once school started. I declined knowing that our personalities wouldn’t work well together. I made a few friends during that week, ones I thought would be my friends for the entirety of my college life.
Fast forward to my first day of college. I met up with my friends only to find that none of them seemed all that motivated or happy to be on campus. We all tried to stay close for a few weeks, but one by one, they all dropped out except for one. Eventually, I did make a couple friends once classes started. Two guys in my Marine Biology course. We were a group who would take on the world together. Or at least play video games where I somehow managed to always win at killing zombies. Of course, I was dumb enough to date one of my only friends on campus and things started to get weird from there.
Fast forward to sophomore year. I had broken up with my friend and I had a new roommate. Another girl I knew from high school who was a year younger than me and the cousin of my previous roommate. She merged right into my group of friends until she decided not to come back the second semester. The same thing happened to my old roommate, only she got another roommate right off. A girl from New Jersey. I finally had real friends and it was great. We did a lot together, hanging out for dinner or movies or weird times on Omegle. I was happy.
Junior year, though, I decided to move off campus. As did one of the guys I hung out with. I didn’t move too far away, walking distance from campus. My roommate (one of my best friends from high school) held monthly dinner parties with my friends from campus. We all got along pretty well and I loved our dinner parties. Unfortunately, my original roommate graduated. And two of my friends dropped out and never spoke to me again. No explanation, no nothing. Just gone.
Senior year. New apartment, same roommate. However, we had no friends to invite over for dinner parties really. I stayed at my apartment more and more, I had no reason to go to campus anymore. And I had a boyfriend who I would travel to see every weekend. It was my senior year and I was busy. I didn’t have time for anything else. Or at least that’s what I told myself when I realized I had no friends left at college. I made a few friends in my last semester, fellow seniors in the psychology program, my second major. We didn’t talk much outside of class, but we both lived off campus so that was okay. Graduation came around and that was it.
I HATED college. HATED it. It was far from the time of my life. I didn’t make more than maybe two lifelong friends. I was tossed aside by some friends like I wasn’t even worth their time anymore. Granted I know I am not a social person. I never have been. But I made plenty of friends throughout school as a child and as a teenager. I was that girl who went home every weekend because if I stayed I would sit in my dorm room alone all weekend. People told me moving off campus isolated me even more. But it didn’t really. Not any more isolated than I already felt.
My undergraduate years were perhaps some of the worst years of my life.