One of the most common anecdotes from those who attend or have attended a university is that college changes you. Many people have discovered themselves at college and will hey tell new students that college changes who you are. Be it the classes, the other students, or the stories you take away, it will change you.

My experience at university is more limited than most but I’m here to tell you that these four years don’t have to change you. The pressure to “discover who you are” is intense enough as it is and the need to find yourself at university just makes that worse. Regardless of the experiences of your parents, best friend, or relatives, your experience doesn’t have to be the same. Sometimes college confuses things or makes you realize how much you want to work on. Everybody has something to work on and when you realize you what exactly that is, college might be over.

Sometimes your moment of “self-discovery” comes before, during, or after your life at university. Sometimes you find it elsewhere and sometimes you don’t find it at all when you’re at school. In some cases, we find who we are in Christ. That’s who we are and discovering ourselves at college just adds to that experience.

Sometimes I walk through campus and look at the girls in sororities and everyone who is involved in clubs, organizations, and study groups and I wonder if this is changing them. Do these years in university change them?

All things considered, we’re all changing. That’s not going to stop, even throughout school, and those changes make a difference. However, college and the experiences you have throughout don’t have to define your character. Speaking from personal experience, I have made few friends and gone to a total of one school sporting event and I completely avoided homecoming altogether. Although those things don’t have to be the things that change me, I feel as if I am just passing through this time in my life to prepare for the years that really will define me.

The main idea of going to a university is to learn, grow, and maybe figure out what you want to do with your life. If huge personal change doesn’t happen to factor into that, don’t feel like a failure. It just means God is preparing something else for you.

Moral of the story: college is shown as something huge and major when sometimes it doesn’t have to be. That doesn’t make you a failure or your school experience disappointing. It just means your time is coming and it just isn’t at a university. There’s nothing wrong with being established as a human or waiting for your time to come.