I’m going into my last year of college and I kinda felt like I did college wrong. Like, my grades are good but everything else about college I failed at. Like socially and stuff, after 4 years I barely know anybody. I commuted(to avoid debt, and did so successfully) so maybe that’s part of my problem.
But I feel college was supposed to be special time in your life and to me it has been indifferent. :/Thoughts?
You may just be a bit more on the introverted side of the spectrum and that’s normal. There are social expectations that we should “have lots of friends” and that college is a time to meet and hang out with people and do crazy stuff to think back on when we are in our 40s. I think those sentiments were created a few generations back when the cost of college wasn’t necessarily a concern. But even you, who managed to do it so far without debt, had to think about the cost as a big factor and it impacted how you attended. Surprise! A bunch of young adults trying to get an education while being stressed about a potentially life-altering amount of debt and an uncertain future aren’t really in the best place to be social and have fun. My point is don’t blame yourself; the system is kind of fucked right now.
If you get your degree that’s great, you’ll have access to more doors in life and hopefully that means more free time to devote to things you already know you like and maybe some stuff you’ve yet to find out you like. If you feel like you want more friends, there are social clubs, discord servers, and meetups in towns/cities you can look into to find folks who are more or less aligned with your interests rather than your education level. There is still a lot about life you’ve yet to see and I think a not-so-great college experience won’t be something you think about even a year after graduation.
Man thanks for the reminder, What influnced my choices was cost and bachelor’s doesn’t have as much strength in the job market it once has. If a more free and less stressful comes at a cost a social life early one so be it. Older me will hopefully appreciate the foresight. I need to put more work in cultivating a more full social life.
Personally? I smoke weed, drink, and contemplate death. It doesn’t pay the bills but it also doesn’t make me happy.
I didn’t make any friends in college. It was a strange place to learn that I was an introvert. Years later I went to law school and had a much better experience. There’s just something about suffering together that builds closer bonds.
My thoughts are that if you didn’t make friendships or useful acquaintances during college then it’s probably down first and foremost to your personality type and how your classes were scheduled. But first and foremost, your personality.
You seem to be hung up on the myth of college as “that special experience” but it’s just a myth. If you happen to be just somewhat on the introvert side and your schedule mixed you up with different people for every course you were taking, good luck forging any long lasting relationships. You can socialise, of course, but if you don’t share the time consistently with people then it’s going to be about as long lasting as acquaintances you make on the elevator or the bus.
You will probably find you start networking much better once you get a job, simply because you will be spending time consistently with a limited amount of people.
You didn’t miss much. Move on and succeed!
For me, university literally made me depressed. But I also met my partner online during that time. I enjoyed studying but this myth that college is the time when you’ll meet loads of friends, have tons of sex and wild parties, etc. Is very, very harmful
You can’t control the past so there’s not much point stressing out over it. Learn what you can from it and apply those learnings in the present where you can actually change things. If you feel you didn’t do enough social things, maybe try joining clubs, being more proactive with organising things with your friends or something else that works for you.
Everyone’s experience is different and it doesn’t mean you did it wrong, you just focused on the things that made more sense to you at the time. Maybe you are realising you didn’t value some other things enough and that’s ok, you can bring those learnings forward.
Congrats on coming into your final year btw and good luck!
Movies make it seem like it’s some magical land of partying and having life-changing experiences every week, but I think the average person just goes to class and goes home.
^ this
So speaking from experience and a background in education, the most important thing you’ll get from uni is yourself. Or more specifically, how you see yourself. Uni (college for you US folk) lets us extend our formative phase and define how we see ourselves and what we’ll put out into the world going forward.
So my advice is go easy on yourself, everyone’s experience is different and no one’s is right or wrong. You mention a lot of great things you did, heading towards graduation with good grades and little/no debt is a huge success, sounds like you’re practical, hard-working and smart. Maybe you didn’t have the wild ragers, hookups, BFFs that we see in media, but I’d imagine you did have some good social experiences, casual friends, good conversations (even in classes) and the sort of interactions that help you build better relationships later on in life.
Take a deep breath, focus on the positive, which there is plenty even in your short post, and remember you’ve got a whole exciting life ahead of you, plenty of time for adventures, friendships/relationships, and you’ve put yourself in a great position to find those.
And I apologize if this sounds preachy or therapisty (and reading comments, it’s not far from what others have said too), but I’m basically writing a letter to 22yo me, and at 38 now, trust me, life has been awesome after uni, so congrats on your hard work, power through to the end of the year, and take some time to feel proud of who you are and have become.
Write down as much detail as you can about what you did wrong so that you don’t repeat the mistakes in the future.
Take what you wrote here about exactly and precisely you missed in college, and expand it to 10 pages.
Your overall goal is to cover in as much depth these topics:
- Exactly what happened. The bare facts. “I went to college starting X date. I took XYZ classes. I lived X place. The weather was X.” etc etc.
- What role your decisions played in that story. “I chose to get a bike, and that caused XYZ. When faced with decision A1 vs A2 I decided A2 because I thought blah blah. That resulted in X.” etc
- What changes to behavior you can make going forward, to avoid the worst pitfalls in the previous experience
The only way to get over any negative life experience is to fully suck the well dry in terms of lessons learned. Any problem you encounter contains potential lessons that can help you avoid that same problem in the future. Life is long. As long as negative experiences are processed into wisdom, it works out to your benefit in the end.
But you have to perform the extraction. Performing the extraction means doing the writing. A lot of writing. As much as you can really. The more details you scrape out in your written exploration, the more completely the extraction is done.
When the experience has been totally drained of potential lessons — when you’ve articulated them all — you will be (and most importantly you will feel) over it.
That’s how you get over a mistake in life. It never goes away. It will always be in your past. But if process it, it shines as a source of good in your past, becomes something you’re proud of, because now the event consists of the fused union of the event and the lessons you learned, and those lessons are valuable enough to make it worth it.
Until you do that, you’ve got all event and no lessons, and it will feel shameful and dark in your memory.
I had a shitty experience myself too.
It’s just another phase of life. You’ll move into the work industry and make friends there, have new experiences. Don’t give this time more significance than it deserves.
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If your grades are good and you enjoy your major, could I suggest becoming a tutor/teaching assistant for a class or professor you liked? It would give you a way to interact with people in your major that might even be in your other classes (whether that’s other TAs or the students you’re teaching), you’d get something for your resume, a professor to use as a job reference, and you should even get paid!
COVID-19 really fucked with the college experience. Add to that commuting and you basically skipped the “away from home and independent for the first time experience” as well as the “captive audience” life of thousands of people your own age looking to make friends and have fun.
That said, yesterday is gone so what about tomorrow? Do you plan to move to a different city for your new career? That could be very exciting.
College is a couple of decades ago for me. I don’t keep up with most of the people I met. The biggest significance it has on me at this point is the qualifications and skills I gained.
The people I’ve met since then have a much bigger impact on my life.
Lean in for the next chapter.
I have the exact opposite experience. It has been a decade and a half for me since I went to college. I went for 4 years, but eventually didn’t get a degree, because it wasn’t the right career for me. I do still keep in touch with the friends I made.
Now I’m doing a retry in college (2 years so far), completely different line of work and this time over I’m making friends, but the gained skills are definitely the most significant.
The difference is that this time, I don’t meet up with peoole outside of school (I have a wife and kids), which keeps the focus on school and away from long term friendships, because friendships are build on shared experiences.
I’m pretty bad at keeping up with people. I enjoy seeing old acquaintances and friends, but I never contact them. So it rarely happens.
Me too. I have a handful of longtime friends, but we see each other maybe once or twice per year. We do keep in touch via whatsapp a lot where we watch soccer games and star trek togehter-ish. I don’t like soccer, but it’s a good excuse to keep in touch with my friends. I feel that it’s hard to make new friends once you’re working fulltime, so I try to hang on to the once I have.
Did many other students commute too? I went to a commuter school. There wasn’t much student life. People mostly went to class and went home.
It’s a mostly residential school
I can relate but lack of socializing in college didn’t bother me (I’m an introvert). Didn’t make any friends during undergrad and made some friends during my grad program that I still talk to but most of my friends are from high school.
Everyone’s college experience is different and just because it didn’t check certain boxes (unless they’re important to YOU), that doesn’t mean you failed. I think it’s put out there to be this special time in your life but “special” is subjective.
