I Hated College

“Nothing feels as strange as when the leaves began to change.”

-Kid Rock “All Summer Long”

Lol, seriously I just put a Kid Rock quote in this newsletter. 

That song is my summer jam. I love it. I have no shame in admitting that.

But now that it’s fall, my music genre preference flipped the switch from new country to New Wave in a day.

And fall is the start of college, so I wanted to write about is a realization I made last week…

I was wandering around the UW-Madison college campus the week before school started and it brought up a lot of memories of things I forgot about my college experience. 

When I started college, I had the grand expectation that it would be greatest thing ever. And it wasn’t. 

It didn't live up to the expectations I had of it. Yes, I graduated and got a degree. But I wanted the college experience more. 

I wanted to find that perfect friend group you always saw in 80’s movies. The Breakfast Club, St Elmo’s Fire, The Big Chill. They had a group of ~8 close friends who met during college, did everything together, and started lifelong friendships (so it seemed). They may have been different, but they supported and loved each other.

In college, all I wanted was friends. I figured the friends would just come to me. It would just happen like it did in the movies. I thought that’s just what happened when you go to college.

But needless to say, it didn’t happen.

Because I didn't make it happen.

And then I blamed the whole institution of COLLEGE for my sub-par experience. I was so jealous of everyone who -I perceived- to have a better college experience than me. I wouldn’t say I had a bad college experience, but I was mad at it. (this is so ridiculous to write).

For years, I was blaming college and not having a better experience for everything happening in the rest of my life since that time.

But now when I think of it, I had a good experience. I knew a lot of people. I went to events and late night coffee dates with friends. I was in a rock band! Dude. I have good memories from college. 

But I told myself it wasn't good enough because it wasn’t like what I saw in the movies. I wanted it to feel a certain way. And I wasn’t feeling the way I thought I would. 

This can be the way social media (and all the kinds of media we consume) works in our lives:

1. We see something on media (social, movies, tv).

2. We internalize that we should want that (the princess wedding, the glorious house, the glamorous job, the college friend group, etc.)

3. We decide that’s what we truly want.

4. We strive to buy it or get it.

5. We obtain it or some part of it.

6. And then we still aren't satisfied.

And the reason we aren’t satisfied is because either.

1. we didn't truly want it in the first place (because we internalized something we thought we should want), or

2. we think someone else is having a better experience/doing it better/happier than us.

We blame the thing or the people around us for not giving us the feeling we wanted when we obtained the thing. We compare our lives with other people – fictional or real – which always make us angry, resentful, or miserable.

Part of my misery was that I wanted college to be easier. I didn’t want college to be hard, which is so funny because college is inherently hard.

It’s supposed to be hard. It’s college, dangnabit!

But I wanted the social part of college to be easy, and I was in denial about the reality of life.

I was in denial that life is hard and easy and sad and disappointing and happy and exciting and boring at times. I wanted it to be happy all the time (probably some internalized expectation from Disney movies). But the experience of life is all the things.

When you start to accept that there will be a variety of emotions throughout life, it makes everything easier.

So last week, as I was watching new students walk around in new friend groups, I noticed that I was only curious about them. Like:

Why are they all wearing the same outfits? (I guess shorts leotards are in now.)

Do they like what they’re wearing or are they trying to fit in by wearing the same thing as others around them?

They look like they have it put together, but I wonder if they’re freaking out about school starting?

Are they really friends or are they pretending so they look like they have friends?

I used to not like college students. They were know it all’s, they had such high self-confidence, and they expected cars to stop for them and never looked before crossing the street. And I was mad they weren’t friends with me. I was projecting my own ideas that they should be friends with me and they’re not, so I started to resent the whole experience.

But now, I am fascinated with students. I can see them trying to fit in and find their place. I can see that they are trying so hard to belong and do the right thing and contribute to the world. 

It’s strange how just one thought can stick with you and affect you for so long. It should have been different. And thinking that held me back in many ways.

If I had just accepted that college wasn’t supposed to give me what I wanted, that college students weren’t supposed to be friends we me. If I had thought that I could make my own friend group, I could have made that quintessential college experience happen for myself.

We so often look outside of ourselves to give us contentment when we can do it for ourselves. It starts with accepting life for what it is now and not expect things to be different. (A great book for this is “Loving What Is” by Byron Katie.)

Finally, being able to accept my college experience and love what I did experience, I can finally say I’m not mad at college anymore.