I always thought of myself as invincible. I approach most things in life with a can-do attitude; anything is possible, and you can overcome anything with enough perseverance. The Ivy League plans I had made throughout high school were crushed by rejection in early fall of my senior year. I let myself cry about it for a few days, then moved on to my Plan B: Clemson University. Despite it being my backup plan (although USC would always be Plan Z), I quickly became obsessed with Clemson. I learned of my acceptance through a phone call from my sister on the day of the Clemson/USC basketball game; I shamelessly cried in my hometown's Forever 21, thanking God for finding the perfect place for me.
Throughout this first semester, I've been surrounded by people who have fallen in love with Clemson completely. I wanted so badly to feel like there was nowhere else in the world where I could be happy. I wanted Clemson to feel like home. Instead, I find myself dreading every second I spend on campus. I spend almost all of my time alone and have struggled to find a group of friends who understand me. I envy my friends at other colleges who have managed to survive so far from home. I had always been the most outgoing and independent, yet I was the one who was miserable and closest to home.
The truth is that college is a vastly different experience for each person. I found that I was mostly miserable because I had been projecting everyone else's experiences onto my own. By comparing myself to those around me, I made myself feel like a failure for not being as happy or as social as they are. I wanted to be as obsessed with my college as my friends were, and as easy to make friends with as my roommate. I hated feeling like I was missing out by not being where my friends and boyfriend were. I often lied when people asked how I was doing in college. But I realized that I'm not the only one who has struggled with adjusting to college. In fact, many people that I opened up to about my unhappiness could relate to how I felt. The first semester of freshman is difficult for everyone. You've been placed in a completely different environment and are expected to somehow survive the immense stress and anxiety brought by it.
Nobody tells you that it's okay to not be in love with every aspect of college. It's okay to struggle with classes but find a great group of friends, or maybe fall in love with your classes and spend most of your time alone. Think about high school: the person you were freshman year was probably very different from the person you were your senior year. Like all things in life, college is an opportunity to explore different parts of yourself. The friends you have now may not be the ones you end up graduating with, and the major you dreamed of your entire life may not end up being everything you thought it would be. Sometimes, the college you're entirely sure of your senior year of high school is not the one that fits you the best.
The point is that you eventually find out what is best for you. One of the most difficult lessons in life is learning to separate what you actually need from what others think you need. Twenty years from now, it won't matter that you chose a different college from your friends, or that your parents disagreed with the career path you chose. You'll be much less content with a job that you despise, slaving away to pay a six-figure debt for a school that you weren't happy with. Sometimes you need to make decisions that the people around you won't agree with, but it is always more important to be happy with yourself than make people happy with who you are.
