To whoever is reading this- whether I know you, we barely interact, or if you're a complete stranger to me- I am going to let you in on a secret that I don't really tell anyone.
I really do not like college.
Oof, I know. Somehow I did not meet the universal standard, that everyone else seems to be achieving, that college is "the best four years of your life." I spend much of my free time alone within the most populated city in the US, I only really stopped being scared of Covid once I finally caught it a few months ago, I have a low social battery which makes college parties quite a chore, and these past two years of the pandemic has generally made my anxiety worse as a result.
I often wonder what my life would have been like if I didn't go to college in New York and if I opted for an aesthetic liberal arts school in the middle of nowhere that had an actual campus, and I didn't have to worry about taking the train to and from Washington Heights if I wanted to have a social life. For those who don't know, I go to a small, private, all-girls Jewish university in Midtown Manhattan (the place to be!) and much of the social scene happens in Washington Heights where our college's all-boys campus is. It's confusing, I know, but just go along with it. Point is, my general anxieties paired with my disdain for house parties often outweigh my drive to "go out" and meet new people.
Now, what I am willing to do is go out to bars, dancing, karoake, etc. with friends, which is when living in New York becomes pretty great. However, my issue still stands that, despite those occasional moments when I do go out on the town and have a good time, my college experience was gone in the blink of an eye, and not necessarily in a "time flies when you're having fun" type of way.
I never want to come across as ungrateful or complaining in these blog entries. I am well aware of how privileged I am to go to a private school that caters to my religious beliefs, and to live in a city that many only dream about. But this is a thought that has been an insecurity of mine and has been weighing on me ever since I returned to campus, and maybe I am not the only one who is feeling it.
In college, it is very easy for your insecurities to be magnified and for self-doubt to kind of be a constant feeling. You are in a transition point in life and to add a pandemic to the mix, it is easy to feel stuck. That's kind of been my feeling lately. I was at home for half of my college experience and basically in my dorm room for the other half, and all of a sudden, I am at the point in life where I start applying to jobs and officially become an adult. But in many ways, I don't feel like an adult. A lot of the time I feel like a kid that was dropped off at sleepaway camp and while there are some days I love it, a lot of the time I want to go home.
While I cannot get into the many different reasons I feel this way, I do want to say that, basically all of these negative feelings are illusory thoughts. (Did I use illusory right? That was the first time I've used it...maybe I shouldn't have told you that.) No one has told me I'm living wrong, but with social media, no matter how you are living in real life, it cannot compete with lifestyles portrayed online. Everyone says social media is fake, but sometimes it truly feels like everyone is part of a more fun and exciting reality than the one you're in. But what's really freaky is when your mind kind of makes up a story of perfection around people you know in real life. Like that one person at your school who seems to have an endless list of friends and things to do. Or it's that person your age who just landed their dream job and you have no idea how they did it. Sometimes you feel like you're the odd one out.
But when it comes down to it, no matter what life you're living, it's yours. Outside the realm of crime, there is no formula or grading rubric as to what is right or wrong. That is something I have been struggling to live by. It's not a bad thing to value time alone. It's not a bad thing to not wanna be in a tiny New York apartment overflowing with sweaty college students, listening to rap for hours on end. And even if you do like that sort of scene, I'm actually pretty envious of you, no matter how ironic that sounds.
With that being said, I am a firm believer in everything happening for a reason. At some point in life, this will be a finite moment, merely a point in time where feeling happy was a lot of the time replaced with feeling lost. I can only hope that it is a buildup for something great.
But to everyone who has doubts about college, their social life, and their overall path, I am right there with you. Sometimes it helps to know that you are not the first person to feel this way and you won't be the last.
... And with that being said I am still terrified to graduate, but that's a discussion for another time.
