Freshman year is an important time, but just the beginning
As the end of my sophomore year at CU comes to a close, it’s difficult not to become nostalgic of all the adventures of the past two years. I came to CU with lofty expectations about Boulder and the thousands of college kids that inhabit a school that’s as close as a college town gets to utopia. Neither disappointed me and I love Boulder, not only for what it is, but also for the life-changing experiences this place has afforded to me. Just to think at the end of last year I almost didn’t come back.
First semester, freshman year is one of the most awkward transition periods of anyone’s life and I definitely felt that pressure to fit into a world that was thrust upon me with the force of a Spartan army.
All of the sudden I was surrounded by thousands of kids that, by the luck of some mysterious draw, were placed in the same living space as me based on three or four less than specific questions on lifestyle preference.
The thing I’ve come to realize is that you can’t possibly have any idea of who you are as a person, let alone your lifestyle preferences, until you’ve become immersed in an uncomfortable situation that forces you to fend for yourself. No mom, no dad, nothing but a few people whom you have no choice but to befriend.
While the dorms are a staple of freshman year, I’m sure most of you at one time or another came to a similar conclusion as I did; the dorms suck. Granted, the social aspect of the dorms is a rare opportunity to make a whole new set of friends, but at the outset, everyone is so consumed with materialism that it’s imperative to pick your friends by considering how they think rather than how they look.
There’s a distinct discrepancy between the kids that are “cool” and drive Audi A4’s and the kids who have the ability to change your life. The latter are the ones who’ll stand up at your wedding and tell embarrassing stories; they are the ones that will have a profound impact on the person you’ll become.
Living up to our party school reputation, many of the stories will probably begin with, “this one time we were drunk.” Following those words that everyone has uttered, Cameron will inform the entire wedding party about the time we belted “In the Still of the Night,” by Boyz II Men, in a cappella form with a slew of sweet dance moves.
Embarrassing, yes, but those are the moments that will live in infamy and define your experience in college.
Getting out of freshman year with a decent GPA and no disciplinary marks on your record can be a daunting task at a school such a CU where the majority of social situations revolve around alcohol. This part of the puzzle, combined with other factors, leads many freshmen into depression. Some cases are severe and others are as simple as missing home.
At some point during last year the novice of college wore off and I realized I was going to be at this place for four more years. This realization, coupled with fluctuating friendships, made me want to leave. I filled out transfer applications and was accepted at numerous other colleges; I had escaped. Over the summer I returned home with the no real direction of where I was going. Suddenly, the proposition of never coming back to Boulder didn’t make sense, I was running away from something I’d put a year of my life into and I wasn’t ready to do that.
Well, I decided to come back and all my previous notions of this place as a symbol for something I hated suddenly disappeared. I moved into an apartment on the Hill, which made me overlook, but never forget, the awful experience of the dorms. The friendships and acquaintances I’d made freshman year, carried over to this year and made it easier to find those social situations that would’ve been impossible had I transferred.
In many ways this year has been the greatest year of my life. That’s not to say it hasn’t been difficult. My roommate went to rehab for a severe drug addiction and that situation opened my eyes to the destructive world that I had so fortunately been shielded from for my entire life.
In the end, running away from a hard situation will never make it go away. The true tale of growth is a person’s ability to adapt to something that makes you unhappy. I did that and now I’m surrounded by a group of people whom I genuinely love. My friends are my family and had I left they wouldn’t be a part of my life.
The only advice I can give is that college is fucking hard. It’s full of ups-and-downs but don’t give up or take for granted one of the greatest times of your life. And that, my friends, is real.
