College life isn’t always how it looks on Snapchat

“Oh man, college is going to be so much fun for you,” my twenty-five-year old sister tells me nostalgically.

“College is the best years of your life, kiddo,” my senior year history teacher says to me on the last day of school. “Make the most of it.”

“Don’t party too hard at Umich!” my friends scrawl in my yearbook.

Throughout high school, I conceptualized college as this far-off dream, a land of cramped dorm halls and cheap vodka shots, a land where confused people immediately bond over their quarter life crises as they stumble, unequipped, onto the brink of adulthood. I wanted that experience. I wanted to be liberated from that bubble of “Oh my God, did you hear so-and-so and his girlfriend broke up!” and “Prom is in a few months and I don’t have a date ughhhh!”

But when I actually started living in Ann Arbor, it was nothing like I thought it would be. The school was massive and unfamiliar. There were so many new faces I never saw again.

There were flyers from club fairs, study abroad meetings, and rush events everywhere. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but there were so many options that it made me feel I had to choose something, anything. I had never felt so overwhelmed in my life. That was the first time I was truly homesick.

I reached out to my high school friends but they all seemed immersed in their colleges. I looked at endless Snapchat stories of hiking trips, frat parties, and people just simply having fun. In my head, I thought, “What’s wrong with me? I should be living that college experience, I should be having a blast.”

Truth is, the “college experience” encompasses a wide variety of things. It is not the Pitch Perfect story you envisioned in your head.

You’re not going to be hitting up Necto Nightclub every evening channeling your Fat Amy dance moves. You might not get accepted into the business frat or the Amazin’ Blue a cappella group you were so desperate to join. In short, college isn’t the glorious coming-of-age movie you wanted to star in.

Granted, there are the nights you stay up in someone’s dorm swapping life stories, and there are the parties where you will barf pina colada all over the sidewalk.

But what people don’t tell you about are the nights you’ll be alone in your dorm, wishing you had a squad to explore downtown with. There will be moments when you’re in a lecture hall listening to a heavily accented voice drone on and you realize you really hate this class, and yet again have no idea what major you want to pursue. There will be moments when you’re in the Ugli at 3am studying your brains out amongst a stack of coffee cups, wondering if you chose the right school.

During my first semester at Umich, I learned to accept that some days will be really shitty. Some mornings you will be greeted by an 8am alarm, knowing you have to get up even though it’s below ten degrees Fahrenheit. Some afternoons will be spent at a career fair, straightening your stiff blazer and clutching your resume as you approach the recruiters in their pressed suits with their flashy smiles. Some nights will consist of staying up for an exam worth half your course grade, feeling like the whole world is crashing down on you at that very moment. 

But half the beauty of college is in these less-than-ideal moments. You don’t have to fake a smile all the time, or constantly validate your happiness for the sake of others. College is a time for fun, yes, but it’s also a glorious time for introspection. It’s the culmination of depressing, painful, and awkward experiences. There will be shitty days. And that’s perfectly okay.