Things College Steals

     Allow me to preface this post by saying that there are a lot of great things about college, such as the fact that it gives you the opportunity to pursue careers you couldn't otherwise. To me, college is the path to becoming a teacher, which is something I've wanted to do for most of  my life. I'm extremely grateful that I've had the privilege to study at college practically handed to me and I understand that so many people would give so much to have the same opportunities I take for granted every day. That being said, college is no heaven or holy land. Like many things in life, it's a stepping stone to get to where I want to be, and that stepping stone does have quite a few drawbacks. Here are some of the things I've struggled to retain (and some that I've given up the fight with altogether) since starting college:

• Free time

Even if all you do is go to class, college still takes up so much stinking time. In high school, you think that you'll have so much free time in college because you only have class maybe 2-4 hours a day, but boy that is so wrong. What you lack in class time you will absolutely make up for in homework time. Plus, it's really hard to not get involved with other things, like clubs, organizations, sports, religious activities, friends, family, jobs etc. At the end of the day, you wind up wanting sleep more than anything else. When sleep becomes your "free time", you know something is wrong. I haven't hit this point yet, but I have friends who are close.

• Hobbies

Last night I was thinking about how when I was in high school I used to go out to the barn in our backyard and play my ukulele. I'd actually come up with songs and memorize them (I never wrote them down so they're lost now). Gone are the days of learning new songs, reading for pleasure, writing stories. For most of my life I always had some kind of story in the works. Sure, most of them are trash, but it was fun and it kept me creative. It was a productive use of time. In college, however, at the end of the day, after reading however many dozens of pages, the last thing I want to do is pick up a book or write a story. I want to either just go to bed or fry my brain to a crisp scrolling mindlessly on my phone or watching some TV show or movie.

• Creativity

Unless your major is art or film or something (and even then, those majors can focus way too much on the technical stuff), college is designed to make your brain analytical. Even as an English major, most of what I read is non fiction and most of what I write is analytical papers discussing uber boring technical stuff like form and style and genre and theme. It sucks the creativity right out of me and makes me dread reading in general, to the point that reading for pleasure is a distant past for me. It has also made writing not as fun and made me kind of give up any passion I had for it (as evidenced by my absence from this blog since freshman year).

• Selflessness

College makes you think everything is all about you all the time. You're there to go to class and get good grades, right? So your entire life should revolve around those two things. Wrong. You will go crazy if this is your mentality. Believe it or not, thinking about yourself all the time actually makes you stress more. When you sacrifice your time, money, energy, etc. to spend time with other people and help other people out you'll find that you're actually much happier this way! That's how life is meant to be lived. Granted, worrying about other people 24/7 isn't productive either, but a healthy dose of caring goes a long way. Thinking and caring about other people though, is definitely something you have to actively practice in college or else you're at risk of getting sucked up in the Me Me Me mentality.

• Healthy habits

No matter how hard you try, you will probably eat ice cream for dinner (or something equally non-dinner-ish and unhealthy) at least once during your college career. And your plans of hitting that complementary gym three times a week? Hahahaha. No. And then there's the whole sleep thing. If you're one of those people who is all "I can't function on less than 10 hours a night" (this was me going in to college), get used to sacrificing your sleep. I'm not saying pull all-nighters. If you manage your time well, this should never have to happen. But expect 6-8 hours to become a new norm and say goodbye to those times when you used to sleep from 1 AM till 11 AM. Granted, my health hasn't gone completely down the toilet since starting college. I do eat my veggies and when I have time I try to go for runs. But I'm not nearly as active or well-balanced as I would like to be and this is largely because I don't have the time or the energy to care most of the time.

• Peace

Even if you're the type of person who never worries or stresses about anything, college will probably freak you out a few dozen times. It's just the culture of college. All of your peers are freaking out, stressing, worrying, pulling all-nighters, calculating their what-if grades and GPAs and it's so hard not to get sucked up into the culture of stress. At college, people measure your diligence by how "busy" you are, how stressed, how little sleep you get. I'm the first to agree that this is absolutely ridiculous. I can work hard and stay sane, thank you very much. I've been doing it my whole life. But even though I know this about myself, I still on occasion find myself sucked into the mindset that if I'm not wigging out about school and grades then I'm clearly not trying hard enough and am going to get punished for it later. THIS IS NOT TRUE. As my good friend Melissa likes to say, sometimes  your best isn't good enough, but that doesn't mean you didn't try your best. All we can ever do is try our best. Sometimes we fall short, sometimes the expectations are too high, sometimes professors are buttholes. But in the end, you can only control so much. In fact, we can really control nothing. So let go of that whole mirage. Do your best. But don't beat yourself up when it's not enough, because at some point it won't be and that is A-okay. 

Peace is something that I'm going to really try to hold onto going back after this break is over (in just one more day). The next few weeks are going to be crazy busy. I know this, but that doesn't mean that I need to go crazy too. I'm going to have to be selective about what I do and don't do. This is hard for me to admit because it's never happened before, but I know for a fact that I simply don't have enough time to do all of the homework that is going to be assigned to me over the next two months. I simply can't read the equivalent of two to three books a week, write papers, volunteer, attend church and bible studies, feed myself, and sleep without sacrificing my sanity. So I'll cut out the nonessentials, the books I don't absolutely have to read and cling to the things that actually matter (church, Dream, friends). I know it's cliche and over-said but you can't choose what happens to you, you can only choose how you react. I don't get to choose my syllabi, but I can choose to not let them dictate my life and my peace of mind.

_________

     I hope that as I gain expertise at being a college student I'll learn how to reclaim the things college has stolen from me, because it's not impossible to have free time, hobbies, creativity, selflessness, healthy habits, and peace at college. Ultimately, college is not in charge of you or your happiness. If you operate that way, chances are that's how the rest of your life is going to run. You're going to let your boss, your job, your spouse, your kids control how happy and at peace you are. But that's no way to live. Neither is waiting for the weekend, the summer, the paycheck, the grade to bring you happiness and rest. Your happiness, your peace, your rest should be unconditional. They should be based on something that doesn't change, something that can't be taken away and broken by a bad grade, an impossible schedule, or difficult people. Now let's see if I can remember my own preaching come Monday....

-SE Wagner