In a past article, I explained that college isn’t really what it appears to be in movies and on TV. I wrote about my loneliness and how it honestly is okay to not make friends immediately. For this week’s article, I’m bringing back that idea of college being a perfect experience. I came across a writing prompt that asked to describe the best college experience.

If you think of that at surface level, it’s a pretty easy thing to write about. But really, it’s more complicated than that.

College isn’t something that you exactly can plan out and describe in detail. Sure, you can talk about your major and what classes you’re taking, but there is so much more than that. There is stress (obviously), fallouts with friends, relationship problems, and those complete and utter breakdowns. You can’t plan for those.

Describing the ideal college experience would mean leaving all that out. And you can’t because those moments, those painful and dreadful moments, are what shape you into the person you’re going to become. They give the much needed mindset to keep figuring life out.

Sure, you can mention parties or going out with friends; those do help you form yourself, but it’s the challenges in your life that make the biggest impact. Especially freshman year. What happens the first year and how you handle that sets you up for how you take on the rest of your college years.

The best college experience varies person to person. Each of us go about our lives in different ways, using experiences to define aspects of our lives. I’ll admit, going out is fun, but that shouldn’t be the definition of the college experience.

Embracing the difficult parts during this time are what define the college experience (albeit not exactly the ideal one). Yet, deliberately trying to define these four years shouldn’t be your main objective. As I have come to realize, college just kind of happens and you go along with all the twists and turns thrown at you.