What I Really Learned in College (so far…)

“I know I’ve left a life behind, but I’m too relieved to grieve…”

I’ve never seen myself not going to college. It was always something that I knew I needed to do in order to get where I need to be in life. My education was always my highest priority and even when I struggled, I knew that failure wasn’t an option. I thought that school was everything, but then I actually got to college. Even though I still have at least a year and a half left of school, I thought I would go ahead and share some of the things I have learned thus far.

Freshman Year:

• Cut ties from people you didn’t like in high school.

Sometimes, you’re only friends with the people in high school because you have to see them for 8 hours every day, five days a week. Once everyone leaves for college, you are no longer tied to them! I think that as soon as the day after graduation, I did a complete purge my Facebook. Do the same! Delete the guy who only tweets sexist comments and the girl who thinks that Instagram is a mirror. Keep the people who you genuinely enjoy seeing on your timeline, cut out all of the junk.

• Try to schedule your classes together to allow study/free/work time.

My mom and dad helped me to create the perfect school schedules. I was at school all day Monday and Wednesday with an evening class on Tuesday. It allowed me the rest of the time to study and do homework and spend time with my friends and have a job, which brings me to my next point…

• Having a job is important, but not if it causes you to fail classes.

I am fortunate enough to have supportive parents and a pretty decent babysitting business, but I wanted a real job, something I could have on a resume. In my spring semester, I started working for Alfred Angelo, the wedding gown shop. It was a wonderful job… for the first couple of weeks. Without going into too much detail, I couldn’t meet their ridiculous standards. They were always trying to get me to work full-time hours, but with school, my schedule turned into a “when I’m not at school, I’m working and when I’m not working, I’m at school” thing. By the end of the semester, I was failing not one, but two classes, and it took an entire week just to request a single day off to catch up on my work. Halfway through the semester, I informed my manager that I would be taking a class or two over the summer, and she said that it would be fine, but when it came time to give her my schedule, she wasn’t having any of it. She looked right at me and said “So, working here is not your number one priority?” I told her, “No, school is, just as it’s always been.” And do you want to know what she said? “Well then, let’s just consider this your 2-week notice.” Boom, job over. Even though I told her that I was a full-time student during my interview, she just didn’t want to hear it. It was quite the relief to not be working there anymore because it allowed me to focus on what was really important.

• No matter how hard you study, someone will always do better than you… even if they didn’t study.

I have never been good at math. At the end of the semester, I was studying like crazy for my math final (I mentioned it in a previous post). The morning of the exam, I sat outside the classroom door, opened up my binder, and reviewed my equations one last time. Shortly after, a few more people from the class showed up and they all began talking to one another. At one point, a guy had mentioned that he hadn’t really studied for any of the exams and he had gotten really good grades on all of them. Another girl had said that she didn’t start studying until the night before the final. I was studying my butt off only to scrape by with barely a C and these people were slacking off and still doing better! I was completely livid! I took me a while to figure out that I can only do my best, even if it isn’t “good enough”. I could only study so much and that was the best I could do. God will never ask me to do more than I can do, so why should I expect myself to do more?

• It’s okay to not want to be social all of the time.

Going to a commuter school doesn’t really give you the chance to make a whole lot of friends. In high school, I was surrounded by people all the time, and once I got to NOVA, I found myself alone. And the weird thing was that I actually liked it. I didn’t have to worry about impressing people that I didn’t care about. In high school, you were surrounded by the same people all day, every day. It’s okay to be alone sometimes. I learned that being by myself is healthy and necessary, something I would learn more of the following year.

Sophomore Year:

•  It’s okay to admit you’re not okay. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Even though I went to a community college and still lived at home, transitioning from high school to college was difficult for me. I can handle heavy course loads, dull and boring professors, and circling the parking lot for an hour to find a spot, but the one thing I found that I couldn’t handle was being alone. All of the friends I had in high school were going on different paths and it seemed as if I was getting left behind. Feeling like you’ve been forgotten is quite possibly the worst feeling in the world. When I had enough of feeling hollow and sad, I decided to talk to a counselor. I realized that I didn’t need someone to fix my problems, I needed someone to listen. Your mental health is important. If you are feeling sad, anxious, self-conscious, talk to someone you trust. Find a friend, a pastor, a therapist, or even a professor. YOU are important and YOU deserve to be happy.

•  Make friends with people who are older and younger than you, especially professors.

I decided to keep myself busy during my second year of school. I was taking an events management class and I threw myself into it. My professor, Nancy, is one of the most amazing, inspiring, loving people I have ever met. She made sure all of us were taken care of and talked to us if we had a problem. She became someone I could trust. In her class, we all had to work together on big projects that lasted all semester. Because of that, I became friends with so many people that I still talk to today. They are the kind of people that push me to become better and to think creatively. They’re also some of the most fun and hilarious people I know!

•  Get rid of toxic people.

I began to see the struggles I had as a weed. Weeds are often hidden among flowers. When I was little, I would help my mom weed the flower bed in our yard and I always had to ask her if I was pulling the right things. The weeds had flowers of their own, and I didn’t want to pull something that seemed so beautiful. My mom taught me that just because something seems good and nice doesn’t always mean that its intentions are the same. When the pretty weeds don’t get picked, they take over the plant and suck the life out of it. That is what toxic things do. That’s what my problems were doing to me. I couldn’t just trim the leaves, or even the flowers, to make it go away; I had to get down and dirty to rip out the roots. I had to remove toxic people from my life. I had to stop seeing only the negatives when I looked in the mirror. I had to stop thinking I was unworthy of God’s forgiveness. I had to stop saying “yes” to everyone and everything. I had to take control of my garden.

•  Be spontaneous! Go out with your friends sometimes!

After taking my first year of college slowly, I decided to branch out more in the second year. I was starting to become friends with a few people in each of my classes. We would get lunch together after class, hang out on weekends, meet before class to study… I never thought that these friendships would grow into something, but it was a nice way to spend my time. After our classes stopped, I still saw most of my friends and we always had fun together. Some of them even went to George Mason with me! If I hadn’t made the small effort to reach out to the people around me, I never would have gotten to experience such amazing friendships.

Junior Year:

Alright, this one is a little different. I spent the first semester at George Mason, the university that I transferred to, and I spent the second semester in Disney World for the College Program.

•  If your dreams don’t scare you, you need bigger dreams.

To say that I was scared to leave home for the first time is a HUGE understatement. I remember the couple of weeks leading up to my departure with double- and triple-checking packing lists, re-making to-do lists, and having panic attacks about if I was missing something. About a week before I left, I met with a friend for frozen yogurt. My friend and I had spent every summer together for almost 10 years, and since I was about to go to Florida and she was accepting an internship in Texas, this would be our first summer apart. I told her about how anxious I was about being away from my family, my fears about my roommates not liking me, and my worries about my anxiety forcing me to quit the internship. Being the most logical-thinking person I know, she looked at me and laid it all out. She explained that I didn’t have a reason to worry because I had everything planned since high school. She told me that there were going to be some tough days when I would want to leave, but I would hate myself forever for quitting. My dream was coming true and it was so big. If it didn’t scare me, then I would have a real problem.

• It’s normal to miss the life you’ve had before.

I wanted to quit my internship at least once a week, whether it was because of long hours, little sleep, disagreements with my roommates, or even stress about the online class I was taking. Every day had some new challenge for me and I always felt like the smallest, weakest person in the world. I was used to structure and balance back home. I would wake up, go to school, go to work, do my homework, spend time with my family, go to bed, and do it all again the next day. Throw in a coffee date with a friend or basketball game and I was golden. I liked knowing what to expect and having a plan for the day. I was living safely. I missed my normal and it was really hard to adjust to life in Florida. However, it was even harder adjusting to life back home. The beginning is always hard, exciting, and even scary, but once I found my rhythm, everything was fine. Change is hard, and you will want to go back to the way thing used to be, but you can’t grow from that. In order to walk, you have to put one foot in front of the other, just like you have to do with your life. Besides, too much routine is boring…

• You can always come home.

I got to come home for about a week in June for my brother’s graduation. When I saw my mom’s car pulling up to the sidewalk at the airport, I started crying. When I saw my dad at home, I practically knocked over my aunt to get to him. When I heard my brother come down the stairs, I squeezed all of the air out of his lungs. To say that I missed my family is a HUGE understatement. The last day at home was hard. My extended family had all left so it was just me, my brother, and my parents. I laid on the couch, crying, and begging my mom not to make me go back to Disney (hard to believe that those words ever came out of my mouth…). Even though my parents didn’t want me to leave, either, they helped me understand that this was something that I needed to finish and that I would be home in 2 short months and that I would want to go back. They were right.

•  Don’t feel like you have to make up for lost time.

Before leaving Virginia, I chose not to get close to people at Mason, or to go out of my way to be social. I saw it as setting myself up for heartache when I left. Seeing everyone’s Facebook pictures from the spring semester made me realize just how much I had missed everyone, despite telling myself not to get close. Coming back, I wanted to throw myself into EVERYTHING the campus ministry had to offer. I wanted to do bible study, ladies ministry, discipleship, sing in the choir, and just be more social. After a few weeks of throwing myself into school, work, and a social life, it was starting to wear me down. I was feeling insecure in coming back, so I thought that if I kept busy, people would like me. I talked to my bible study leader about all of the things that were going on and she simply said “you don’t have to make up for lost time”. She suggested that I talk to my other friends about what I was feeling and every single one of them told me that I was wrong to think that no one missed me. One even said that every time she saw one of my pictures from Disney, she wanted to cry because she missed me so much. If I had been open and honest about this from the beginning, I don’t think I would have had the sadness I experienced.

I never expacted college to go the way it is. I expected to have excitement, make new friends, go to basketball games, and get a degree along the way. I was wrong. I was SO wrong. It's easy to look back and see what I could've done differently, and I kick myself for them every single day, but I can't change the past. All I can do now is move forward with all of the wisdom and knowledge I have gained so far.