Disclaimer: This is an opinionated article. Some, if not most of you, will disagree.
I've always been that person who wants to be all grown up. I've wanted a career, my own place, and a French bulldog ever since I can remember. Everything in between (aka high school and college) was just a means to an end in achieving my goals. You can imagine being a year away from having it all, being a bit frustrating.
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I gave college a chance my first two years. I went to the parties, I went to office hours, I joined clubs, I made friends - only to be disappointed. How very drab of me.
Now, you might be telling yourself, "Well maybe she didn't choose the right school for her" and while that might be the case, it's not the full story. What I hate the most about college is the expected 'college experience' I am supposed to have.
That phrase or slogan or whatever it is haunts me. It follows me everywhere I go. Whenever I turn down a party or choose to leave town for the weekend, I always have at least one person ask me, "Aren't you afraid about missing out on your college experience?" I always have the same response: "Since when did the college experience turn into being only about partying and sex?"
I played into the game the first two years. I went to the same parties, hung around the partying crowd, only to realize how miserable I was. It seemed like all I was surrounded by were surface-level conversations that no one would remember the next morning. I would often wake up the next morning, excited about the human interactions I had experienced the night before, only to realize I was the only one who cared or remembered.
I quickly made sense of it all. College parties were a competition of who could drink the most, who could take a different person home each weekend, and who was the life of the party. But mostly, as a girl, I came to find that boys only paid attention to me because they wanted one thing: sex. I watched boys get rejected by girls, and then without even thinking twice about it, these boys would move on to the next girl that caught their eye.
Maybe I am just young and naïve; maybe this happens in bars and anywhere else drinking occurs. But what happened to real human connection, where people actually try to get to know you? The real you. What happened to the real college experience, where people join clubs and make friends with their professors? Where our whole social lives don't revolve around partying and drinking and sleeping around?
Everyone will experience college differently and will most importantly choose to experience college differently. So please, next time I decline to go to a party with you, don't tell me I'm missing out on the "college experience".
