Like many of my peers, I've dreamed of going to college since I was quite young. In all of the movies I enjoyed throughout the years, almost all of the characters were either getting accepted to college, going to college, or had already gone to college. My teachers shamelessly referenced our futures with "you'll need this when you go to college" or "you're going to wish you could take naps when you're in college" and things of the sort. It was expected of me by everyone, including myself.
Fast forward a ways and I am a senior in high school. Only recently establishing a stable place to live, walking into the snares and traps of fiscal suicide, and holding desperately onto my still present expectations of going to college, but more in the way you hold onto a really good dream when you accidentally wake from it.
For existing in a society where going to college is so expected of me, college is really f*cking hard to figure out (especially when you are poor). I am lucky, though. I made it to college, I'm here now. And although I am actively repressing the debt that is diseasing my entire future, I know how many people would want to be here, and I know how necessary it is for me to get a degree so that I can go to all of those places expected of me: Grad School, The Workforce, some type of companionship, etc,. So despite all of the difficult parts of getting to where I am, I have the luxury of going to some pretty incredible, sometimes difficult, but always educational places.
It's kind of humorous, the weird places life takes you. The weird situations life puts you in. All of the times something goes full circle. The fact that you can make a joke about literally anything, yet there are always instances which things should be taken seriously. Well, it might be because I'm in college now, but college has illustrated so much of this existential humor. When I received the ever-so-cliche graduation gift of Oh, The Places You'll Go, I really didn't think it meant I'd end up in some of the weird, crazy, wonderful, scary situations I've been in, all because of college.
I never thought I'd end up consoling an outrageously intoxicated football player because his girlfriend dumped him. I never thought I'd find myself subject to sexual harassment in very public places while people accepted it as the norm. I never thought I'd have to experience the drastic mental damage done to a friend who was sexually assaulted. I never thought I'd have to sit idly by while my college does nothing about it. I never thought I'd know more than two vegetarians. I never thought I'd meet an actual, real-life vegan. I never thought that I would, for a time, be an actual, real-life vegan. I never thought I would witness someone who'd never used drugs become addicted to one of them. I'd never thought I'd be so sad. I never thought I'd be so happy. I never thought I'd spend weeks at a time unable to be around a single person, or unable to be alone. I never thought I'd be so honest with so many people, and I never thought It'd help me. I never thought I'd be very good friends with someone who supports the existential enigma that is Donald Trump. I never thought I'd pledge to be a part of a frat. I never thought going to college would be one of the hardest decisions to make, maintain, and most often to not regret.
Nobody ever told me that going to college would also mean experiencing some devastatingly traumatic things, whether that means to take witness to others' experiences or to stay present during my own. Nobody realizes where they send their children when they go to college, because a lot of people are ignorant to the things that happen in schools, and in all parts of the world. When you go to college, you experience a little bit of everywhere every student came from. It's complicated, bringing so many diverse people together, but ultimately it is good.
Although this isn't where I thought I'd be when I imagined college as a child, I suppose I'm glad to be here. The good and bad that I experience here are mere representations of the good and bad everywhere. All in all, the place I've gone are proof that there is work to be done.
