What college never taught me.

College, those 5 glorious years of freedom. Where if you don’t want to show up to class,you don’t have too! If you want to wear sweats everyday, more power too you. You haven’t your washed your hair in 3 days (ya nasty) but it is okay because no one else has either. The days where you got a month off for Christmas, a week in the spring so you could get away and 2 whole months in the summer where you could frolic in the sunshine all day long. College is a blast!!  Yeah it can be stressful during finals week when you have 5 papers and 5 exams all two days apart but usually it's your own fault for putting it off for so long! College taught me how to put everything off until the last minute and still manage to get it done. College taught me that I will take classes that will suck all the life out of me just because its “required” for my major. College taught me that life is not always fair but you need to put on your big girl panties and figure out how to deal with it. It taught me I am accountable for my work and my mom will not always be there to bail me out. And finally it taught me a little bit about the person I really was all along. It allowed me to flourish like an adult but within the safety net of its walls.  But for all that college taught me, when I left those walls, I felt extremely unprepared for the real world.

When you enter college at the age of 18, you are expected to pick a major and that major will determine the rest of your life course. I was in no way prepared to make that decision and I choose based on something I thought I wanted but even more importantly, something my family wanted for me. I changed my major a few times and finally landed upon something that was easy. From 18-22, I had no idea what I wanted to do for ever. I picked some things I thought would be cool (and my family "recommended" I do) but I always had a chance to change my mind. I always had more time to explore what was a good fit for me.  College (I am referring to college as a person so bare with me) handed me this degree and told me I was ready to take on the world. I had the degree I needed to find my dream job. Then reality came crashing down on me and fast. What I wanted when I was 20 years old and changed my major for the last time was not what I wanted for ever. I had no safety net to fall back on. I could not just say wait never mind, I don’t want this job anymore, quit, and sign up for something else that night. No sir, once I made the decision I was stuck so I better choose wisely. Gone were the days I could say' " Hey I don’t really feel like working today so I wont, I get 3 unexcused absences anyways. Hey Christmas is here, see you in a month." WRONG! That month turned into one day. College did not teach me what a 401k is, a w-2 form, what all the insurance lingo is, and what to do if I feel completely lost. Where I could look for guidance with out feeling completely incompetent. I can no longer hide in my favorite teachers office until it all clicked in my head. Worst of all, gone were the days of wearing sweatpants in public. You now have to look presentable in public, EVERYDAY! 

I think college is great but college also sucks. I shouldn’t have to make a decision at 18 about what I want to do for the rest of my life when I haven’t even begun to figure out who I even am. Yeah, college can teach me all the educational information I need but I get out there and have never had the experience that is needed. Yes, I can take an internship but is that experience. Not really. Working 10-15 hours a week isn’t experience. And even if you worked a part time job, was it a part time job doing what you wanted to do forever, probably not. College is great in so many ways but as I face the struggles of everyday, I realize that the walls of safety I had gotten so used too are gone. That all the ways I thought college was preparing me are wrong. College does not teach you what it means to truly fail. You fail a class, you re-take it and it goes away. You fail at a job, that is stuck with you forever. College also does not teach you that all your worth should not be wrapped up in one grade. One grade will not determine who you are in this world. I wasted countless hours beating myself up over a bad grade because to me a grade = worth. It doesn't, I was stupid. College doesn't teach you that it does not matter how many friends you have, but the quality of those friends. I felt they if you didn't have a million different friends to always ask you to go somewhere then you weren't "experiencing college". Wrong. After I graduated, I realized I would not change the few quality friends I have for all the friends in the world. I could go on all night, but to all my other graduates: what did college not teach you??