Column: Guest Column

“It’s not the party you expect it to be.”

A friend of mine, Amanda Wood, offered those words of caution the August before my freshman year of college. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting; I just knew that I wanted it to transcend any experience I’ve ever had. After successfully completing my first semester, I can say for certain that Amanda was right, it’s so much better.

I’m attending the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and I’m majoring in — well, that changes a lot. I thought about biology for a while, then switched to journalism, missed the sciences and explored biomedical engineering, then pondered the possibilities in English; for now, I’ll settle as an undecided undergrad.

Deciding which academic path to follow is more than overwhelming. The majority of the people I’ve asked seemed to know confidently and exactly what they want to do. Realistically, only a small percentage of those students will actually follow through with the major they decided on during their freshman year. Even with that in mind, it still doesn’t do much to alleviate the stress of the uncertainty.

Choosing a major is a significant goal in the bigger picture that doesn’t need to be decided soon. However, the immediacy of deciding which classes to take is a slightly more significant challenge.

As masochistic as it sounds, I like high levels of stress. I like pushing deadlines, working against the clock to deliver a piece of work of which I can be proud. And I generally thrive under pressure.

I applied my affinity for stress in selecting classes for the fall semester. I chose to take an 8 a.m. chemistry course, calculus and three writing intensive courses. In retrospect, that was the mistake that shaped my first semester.

Even the “easiest” college classes are designed to challenge you, so in my attempt to prove something to myself, I took on a course load that created more stress than I was ready for. There were times when I honestly wanted to just quit, especially the weeks when I had my calculus and chemistry exams in the same week, along with two papers. After receiving my final grades, I saw that my performance overall was average, but the most important part is that I survived it, I’m coming back and I’m going to do better.

While academics are inarguably the most important part of college, it’s everything else that makes these four years the best years of your life. The friends you make, the lessons you learn and the stories you’ll be able to tell for years are worth so much more than the ever-increasing tuition rates.

I honestly thought I wasn’t going to make any friends. I’m a pretty likeable person, but when I meet new people, the funny, interesting part of my personality is unfortunately overshadowed by my awkward shyness. I become more of an observer and just stop talking altogether. During Welcome Week, I was overwhelmed with 5,800 other freshmen trying to make new friends, too. Instead of delving into the crowd, armed with a few conversation-starters, I kept to myself in my dorm room.

Eventually, I got around to liking people, and by the end of my first semester, I made a great group of friends. I think one of the greatest things about college is that no one knows you coming into it.

You have the freedom to be yourself and you invariably will find people who appreciate all of your oddities. My friend Charlie is one of the funniest, quirkiest, smartest people I’ve ever met, and it’s hard to believe that he hardly made any friends in high school. When it comes to starting over in college, everything about the past, especially about high school, is irrelevant.

Sami, Charlie, Rosie, Alladdin, John and I have grown close during the last semester. We’re the group that’s willfully ignorant of the “quiet hours after 11” rule. We host impromptu movie marathons on the occasional school night, cramming six people onto a lumpy futon watching “Pulp Fiction,” “The Dark Knight,” and every episode of the “Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job.”

We offend each other playing Cards Against Humanity well into the night, and then drag ourselves to our 8 a.m. lectures. We argue about ideologies over dinners that consist of cereal and ice cream.

We’re highly immature, but quietly brilliant. And every day we spend together we become even more convinced that this is going to last forever, and I honestly hope it does.

I absolutely love everything about college from the campuswide zombie apocalypses, to the deep conversations about what’s wrong in the world and how we should fix it, to the all-nighters in the library.

I’ve come to learn the truth in the cliché phrase, “finding yourself in college.” I’ve learned so much about who I really am as a person and I’ve become much more aware of the world. I don’t know if the “party” gets much better than this, but I’m eager to find out what the spring semester has in store.

 

Nya Lony is a freshman at the University of Minnesota and a former Albert Lea Tribune intern.