I still remember how it felt to hear those words at the end of high school: “Now, you start the best years of your life.” To put it lightly, high school was a very hard time for me. This notion that the best times were yet to come was good, in a way. It gave me hope that my future would be more rewarding than the endless trudging-toward-nothing I had been doing for 12 years. It was a nice sentiment — that is, until college actually started.
I moved to Vanderbilt in August of 2021. I lived in North House during my first year; I had a good roommate and a decent room. However, that year was nothing short of the worst time of my entire life. I was a pre-med student who hated my studies. I had no friends, acquaintances or study buddies. I was in no clubs and hadn’t picked a major yet, so I didn’t attend any of those events either. Frankly, I was lonely and very, very sad.
Yet, those words still echoed in my head: “Now, you start the best years of your life.” Was college supposed to be the best years of my life? At that point, college was so horrific that, if you had asked me, I would have said my best year was when I was nine and went to Walt Disney World — certainly not my 18th birthday spent in a city far away from my family and friends.
Life is a series of ups and downs: a roller coaster with no end. College did, eventually, come back up. I have reasons to be glad that I’m here: three close friends, a second home in the Russian department, a fun writing hobby and irreplaceable mentorships with my professors. I met people who I will love for the rest of my life. So, here I am, acknowledging that college isn’t all that bad. Still, I find it hard to believe that it’s the “best years of your life.”
If these are the best years of my life, I would be super disappointed. I’ve had a great time in college, but I’m missing so many pieces of the puzzle: I haven’t traveled, written a book, run a foster home for underserved cats or gone skydiving. My bucket list is virtually untouched since its inception when I was 11 years old and bored of watching “Gravity Falls.” I think that, objectively, I will have a better year when I spend it traveling Europe someday rather than cramming for an endless barrage of midterms.
It seems the optimism behind these pro-college statements is well-intentioned but misplaced. Yes, I think it was worth it to go to college — socially and academically. Yes, I also think it was fun sometimes: I have a long list of late nights at the bowling alley to back that up. But, do I think it was more exciting to go bowling than to go skydiving someday? Probably not. I also believe that these statements are inherently limiting. As exciting as it was for about one year to think that university would be better than high school, it was much worse to believe that, in a short four years, I would have spent all of my excitement for the rest of my life. This belief created the idea within me that I was not only missing out on the “college experience” and living a more boring life than my peers but also losing the limited opportunity to live my “best life.” I felt left out seeing my floormates go to five parties per weekend while I could barely get out of bed to microwave a bag of Bagel Bites for my daily nutrients. My FOMO made me feel the need to get out of my closet-sized dorm room, but it also isolated me even further. In reality, though, my floormates still felt homesick, cried themselves to sleep some nights and forgot to eat breakfast before a big exam. College isn’t a movie because life is never so one-dimensional — the people you envy struggle, too, even if they mask it with frat parties and formals.
It’s for the best that we strive to live beyond Vanderbilt. Most of us are quick to point out that we have the rest of our lives to do many things: find love, have kids, make a career or find our passions. Yet, we still often repeat the sentiment that we are happier now than we will ever be again. Maybe that’s your truth — but I refuse to let it be mine.
As my college career nears its end, yours will, too — sooner rather than later. It’s fast approaching — I am a senior, after all. Yet, I know that the best years of my life are still to come, waiting on the back burner for when I need a pick-me-up somewhere in the next two to 60 years. For better or for worse, life evolves with the changing seasons. For most of my peers, I think that the same is true. Maybe college will be your most social years. Maybe it will be the most intellectually rich, mentally stimulating era in all of your life. And, if you’re anything like me, these years may have included some rough patches that you’d rather move past. Regardless of what your experience looked like, you have the rest of your life to try to top it — and you should try to make each day better than the last. Life isn’t linear, and neither is excitement, joy or the “best years of your life.” So, let’s stop saying college is the “best years of your life” and start focusing on how to make your future even better.
Maybe you’ll spend college vowing to speak 10 languages, read every Dostoevsky novel and climb Mount Everest. However, maybe you’ll just learn how to wake up and make the most of your life — and that’s much better than any frat party could ever be.
