If you ask me: college isn’t the best four years, and that’s okay

By Julia Swain

Some days—like today, strolling around the lake with a coffee under the warm sun—I can’t help but love college. I love the freedom (or at least as close to freedom as I can get living in a dorm and having classes all day), I love getting to spend my flex dollars on a coffee from Rinnova and pretending I’m a “real adult” with a morning routine. I love bumping into friends between classes and knowing there’s always someone to wave to across the lake. 

Then there are the days where I absolutely despise college, the days where I have to walk to my 8 a.m. in below freezing temperatures, the days where I’m running off two hours of sleep and not nearly enough caffeine. Even as a senior, I still have days where I miss my mom and sleeping in my own bed. 

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received was from one of my teachers in high school on the final day of classes for seniors. He said, “If college is the best four years of your life, then the rest of your life will be pretty disappointing.” College shouldn’t be the best four years of our lives, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be four really good years at the same time. 

Every time I’m having a rough day, this advice reframes how I see the long hours of homework and the lonely moments in my dorm room. College isn’t meant to be the peak that we spend the rest of our lives wishing we could climb back to; it’s merely a season, a small part of our lives in which we have the opportunity to make decisions that impact the rest of our lives that should be equally as important and exciting. 

Some days are fun and exciting, full of laughter and spontaneous Taco Bell runs (shoutout to the employees at the Xenia Taco Bell for putting up with us), and other days are exhausting and hard, full of tears shed over an overwhelming amount of homework and wishing you had your mom to cook you a homemade meal instead of having to eat whatever the dinning hall is serving that day. Many days are somewhere in the middle, the kind of mundane that makes us question what day it even is and how we’re already midway through September. 

And maybe that’s what makes this season of life so meaningful. It’s not about college being the best four years of your life, but about learning how to live fully, and grow humbly, in the years you’re given. Right now it looks like balancing classes, friends , and working that minimum wage campus job. It’s messy, yet fleeting, yet exciting all at the same time. 

Julia Swain is a senior Journalism student and the Editor in Chief of Cedars. She enjoys concerts, coffee and watching and analyzing any Cleveland sports team.