The Best Four Years

The night before the first day of my freshman year, I had trouble sleeping. It wasn’t that nauseating concoction of excitement and nerves that sent me tossing and turning during the month-long buildup to that first day, nor was it the fact that my mom had flung her arms and legs around me as if I’d take off running and never come back. It was a sense of existential unease, tempting me to spend eternity cloaked in that warm, heavy darkness where time didn’t exist. Tomorrow would mark the official start to what I’d been told were going to be the best four years of my entire life. 

Maybe the people around you, who watched you grow, who taught you everything you knew, said something like this before you left: “experiment while you still can,” or “cherish these moments, they won’t come again.” By the time my room was packed up, my then 18-year-old self was too wracked with anticipation to question why I was supposedly fated to peak at 22.

I had spent the last year and a half of high school sifting through brochures that marketed the best college experience: perfectly curated images of friends, fun, learning and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that I had to take advantage of before it was too late. They promised to help harness that raw, untapped potential us prospective students were apparently teeming with. 

The freedom to make mistakes, embrace the thrill of spontaneity and immerse ourselves in the rare joy of learning something new for the sake of building character were all posited as youthful luxuries only these next four years could offer. For those of you who received a “waiting for the host to start this meeting” notice before virtually marching through the arch, I can only imagine the feeling of this precious time slipping away.

Now, halfway through my freshman year, I worry that I’m not doing enough changing, or growing, or fun-having to last me an entire lifetime. More than anything, I resent the thought that I should. 

Framing each individual’s time in college under the singular assertion that these years are certain to be the best of our lives is almost certain to fall short of the expectation. Some might struggle to fit in with their peer group, or find the academic expectations incompatible with their mental health. Others will lose sleep trying to balance demanding work hours on top of their class schedule. College is hard, maybe even impossible at times. 

We have to know that’s okay.

The discovering we do here, both inside and outside of the classroom, ultimately informs how we move onward. I question why everything supposedly gets worse once I’ve discovered my passions, learned to speak up in a room full of 400 people and explored my limitations after many late nights sleeping in the library and many weekends making up for it.

But just as every second of college is precious, so is every second of life. I can’t accept that my life begins and ends before I’m even old enough to drive a rental car. So enough with the clichés. I’m reclaiming my college experience for what it is: an experience.