Back in high school, we glorify the thought of “college.” We spend countless hours each night ensuring we have the grades to get into our dream school, go on campus tours, talk to our advisors, etc. We always envision ourselves being up late studying and partying on the weekends, however, I feel that most adults really fail in preparing us for the real deal.

We’re taught that our professors won’t “spoon feed” us, that lectures and reading will be the highlight of our educational career and papers will suck, but we are never taught how to fully handle all the emotional turmoils that come along with college.

1. We’re expected to know what to do and where to be at age 18.

At 18, we’re pretty sure we know everything, just because we’re legal adults, but of course, once we go to college all of that changes.

You realize that things that once interested you now bore you, you want to try new things and study different topics, maybe even experiment in some embarrassing exercises. But it goes far beyond education.

Most of us move out at the age of 18, and instead of learning how to focus on our careers, we learn what partying, poverty, hunger, stress, and not knowing who the hell you are really means.

At that, everything becomes the Game of Life to you, and once everything goes wrong you try to blame your parents for never teaching you better, but you know they did. Then you come to realize everything’s your fault, and the one thing you wanted to study for like ten years is not your thing anymore, and you’re not too shabby about this campus that you and your parents worked hard to get you into, but here we are.

2. The loss of your first love.

In high school, we’re absolutely convinced that the first person who looks at us will probably be our future spouse. Everything was so innocent, and even holding hands was a big deal. Back then, boys were nice and bought girls flowers and chocolates. Girls were loyal and loving (as so many of you men now think otherwise…) Everything was easy.

So easy, that it wasn’t real. We learn as adults when we experience our first true love, that a lot of effort and pain goes into a serious relationship. We initially thought that love is all we need. Then we are quick to learn that a lot of it depends on what you’re studying, who your friends are, whether you like to go out or sit at home, your background/culture and its expectations, your astrological birth sign, and most importantly, whether or not that special someone even wants a relationship or if they just want to sleep with you. Unfortunately, these are all difficult topics to choke out in the dating world without being labeled as a “stage-5 clinger” for expecting a normal relationship.

After losing that one person who really taught you how to love, you are plunged into this vicious dating cycle and begin to think nothing ever works out anyway, so why even try.

3. Overload and regurgitation of unnecessary information.

We go to college with the expectation that we will finally be able to study what we love without all that bullshit we don’t really care about. We even select campuses around our major and move hundreds of miles away just to chase our niche.

Sorry to break it to you, but that’s not the case at all. We are thrown into undergrad classes that are, for some reason, so much more intense than the high school version of these classes, realize we really could care less about the topic, and are still forced to memorize the date and time World War 2 began and ended, along with so much other worthless information per regard to our career, that we literally regurgitate information in a haze and become crazy people who can solve calculus formulas in our sleep.

Then you think, it’s okay! I just have to get my AA, then I can learn all about the stuff I actually Like. False, sorry.

You are still expected to spend hard cold sweat, blood, and tears, on information that will never benefit you or the people around you whatsoever, and for what? “This exercises your brain, children, bare with me.”

4. Stress

As if spending countless hours and headaches each day on information we will never use wasn’t enough, most of us are expected to work or engage in internships to ever be successful in the “real world”.

Now with stress comes motivation, right? Well, my bed is so motivating, I never want to get out of it and I pretty much cry every day when I have to.

Because being a full-time student working 2 jobs, and juggling a growing musical career, will do that to you sometimes.

Unfortunately, the stress of making money gets to us, so we end up studying what we DON’T love, and a lot of students will spend countless hours on their hobbies just to feel like they aren’t losing themselves in school.

Not only that but as bionic as we college students may seem, food and shelter are still a necessity. We can’t really obtain all that without maintaining a steady income, and with how expensive everything is nowadays, we have to work a lot, whilst studying. Some nights, we just don’t sleep.

It turns out, that sleep deprivation and stress are actually some of the leading factors of depression. Voice of experience? Hell yeah.

5. Poverty

Even though most of us are actually pretty smart, it is almost impossible to find a decent, well-paying job, without a college degree of some sort.

So, most of us are stuck working in restaurants and department stores, being paid way too little to deal with old snobs, slippery floors, and extensive amounts of labor. I know I sound spoiled saying this, but until you have served in a restaurant, you do not understand the struggle.

We work our asses off and barely make enough to pay rent, half of us have cars that are super unstable or falling apart, and most of our diets are pretty disgusting, (or non-existent), considering we can’t afford all those organic foods and nutrients Michelle Obama forced into our grocery stores.

So, not only are we learning too much, working too much, and sleeping too little; we can’t even afford good foods or safe environments half the time.

6. Search of Identity

Upon enrolling in college, we are suddenly surrounded by a cluster bomb of cultures and beliefs, even some that we never heard of.

Everything’s so shiny and new, we, of course, want to figure out where we belong in the spectra, although we already did that in high school.

Am I a hipster? Am I suddenly into Harry Potter and Star Wars? Do I want to be outside with all the hippies relaxing, or hunting with all the rednecks next door? Am I even religious anymore? Should I do those drugs? Should I go out to this new club? Do I want to try hookah? Am I going organic?

College students change their majors and personalities quite a few times before they realize how much money they’ve wasted experimenting and growing, that they didn’t even feel much of a change.

7. Regret

“Shit. I shouldn't have gone out last night.”

I’ve heard and said that so many times I wonder why I’m even successful, to begin with.

“I wish I didn’t open up to him/her.”

It suddenly feels like no one can be trusted, because for some reason, adults who should’ve dropped the high school bullshit suddenly turned into spawns of Satan, and make us miss the good ol’ days when all we had to worry about was a good ol’ flurry in the girl’s bathroom on the second floor after gym class.

“I’m homesick.”

Students often face nostalgia the first couple of years of their college careers.

“Can I drop out yet?”

Sometimes, college and everything around it can be so demanding we have nervous breakdowns and decide to give it all up for a half hour before we realized we worked way too hard to throw it all away.

8. Drug and Alcohol Abuse

College kids seem to have this “crazy party animal” stereotype. Well, go figure. I mean teens are sent off to live on their own for the very first time, no parents, no rules, and drugs and alcohol are so easy to reach from the students and others around them.

Growing up, most of us didn’t have those “cool parents” that let us drink at home or on special occasions, or even just for the hell of it. Most of our parents seem like robots who never drank or did drugs and we have to live up to that. Then when we’re set free, alas, hell is released.

Not only did we discover that alcohol boosts our confidence, can make our emotions go numb, or music and sex so much better than it usually would be, but we also learn what it’s like to black out, wake up on the pavement of a strange home terrified and alone, have three day hangovers, and become addicted to caffeine and greasy foods. And then you gain the freshman fifteen and never really lose it.

And of course with all the partying comes tolerance and we want something a little extra. Only on special occasions of course, and before we know it, most of us are potheads who can’t function sober, we’re poppin’ Adderall that we bought from the kid in bio so we can stay up late and focus on our homework, cocaine sounds fun because even though it’s only a thirty minute high, it’s a good one with no side effects besides the constant release of every emotion we never knew we had and physical side effects. Then there are music festivals because we all think we’re hippies all of a sudden, and who the hell goes to one without rolling on ecstasy or molly? At that point, you’re not too far off from wondering what an opium can make you feel like even though you don’t need it, waking up with a bottle of God knows what on your nightstand every morning to function, you’re not eating because coke makes you feel full, and you’re smoking everything you can get your hands on.

It’s horrible to see how many brilliant students have destroyed their lives by getting too involved with reckless alcohol abuse and drugs that never belonged to them in the first place.

9. Fear of the Future

In college, we’re expected to prepare for our future. But every university in the country basically creates its own utopia of culture, standards of living, and how life should be. We are then released into the world where people don’t live in dorms and frat houses, if you can’t buy food you’re screwed because your parents aren’t paying for it, if you wreck you better have your own insurance, mortgages and paying for water is suddenly a thing or you’re stuck in a third-world home in the United States of freaking America.

All that builds overwhelming fear in the hearts of students as they grow closer and closer to graduation because we spent so much money and drowned ourselves in student loans for a university that never taught us how to deal with “the real world” and what it pertains.

10. False Sympathies for Mental Health

So, there’s this mental health awareness thing going on at all the colleges now, which is awesome and all, but do they actually understand how horrible conditions are for the hearts and souls of their students?

Probably not or they wouldn’t waste our time with unnecessary information, 20 page research papers, exams to falsely test our knowledge, some perfect utopia that isn’t how life wants us to be, and the countless “come to your guidance counselor for help, and if we have time, we might stop you from committing suicide over failing a test that shouldn’t ever make or break your career!”, and college wouldn’t be so damn expensive when we barely have enough money to pay rent.

If colleges truly understood the reasons we become mentally insane in such a short time, then the aspect of a university would change as a whole. Sorry to burst your bubble, but hanging posters about depression and suicide awareness in the dining hall isn’t going to stop anyone from feeling that way.

11. If you fail college, you fail at life

I know my conservative parents, as well as many others, are going to want to kill me for saying this, but the fact of the matter is, you can still survive without a college degree - you just have to be smart about it.

Yes, college is very important and can guarantee more of a chance of success in the future, but you don’t HAVE to go to college if you feel like you can’t handle it. Just don’t be a bum.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs never went to college and look at them now. If you feel like you can go straight into opening a business, or be successful in the arts without college, go for it. But don’t cry when all else fails and you don’t have a degree to get you the job you deserve.

12. Loneliness

Unfortunately, the rumor that tells us we will basically lose all our childhood friends upon graduating high school is more than true. Everyone disperses to different schools and states, and yes, we still have social media, but it is very rare that you’d ever see most of your classmates again unless you were very close to them.

Incoming freshmen experience heavy changes between a new school, new town, not living at home, and having to make new friends. Obviously, this puts a lot of pressure on the students and most of them end up either too popular, or too alone. Then, of course, nostalgia comes into play because why change what we already established in high school, right? Unfortunately, most students have no choice.

13. College is hell

Sorry to burst bubbles, but college looks way better on-screen than it does in reality. Yes, the frat houses and parties are accurate, but what is often hidden from the theatres is that college students have to study more than they sleep, they have to maintain a steady income and indulge in internships if they want to be successful. Not only that but if we party all the time, we’ll flunk out before we can say “Graduation”.

So yes, college is stressful and all, however, I’d rather suffer for 4 years and be set, than have to suffer this way for the rest of my life.

Hell is worth the endurance to have a Heaven.