The Best Four Years Myth

         Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by the “College is the best four years of your life!!!!” myth.

         (Yes, a myth….or at least a situational truth).

         What I mean to say is that, yes, for some people, college is the most wonderful experience, and it is a place with only joyful memories. However, approaching that phrase as a universal truth is deeply harmful to those people, like myself, who do not feel that way.

         Hearing that college should be the best four years of my life has been an extremely isolating statement for me because when it’s not the most amazing adventure, no one talks about it. The mindset is that we must all subscribe to the belief that we should be living our best years. Right now.

         I don’t think that’s fair.

We don’t put that expectation on any other phase of life, so why are we approaching college with that pressure? What are we left to feel if we don’t feel like we’re having the time of our lives?

For me, it was disappointment and the feeling that I was doing something (or everything) wrong.

Going into college, I assumed that all my issues and insecurities that I dealt with in high school and before would evaporate and I would be left to be a happy-go-lucky person living my best life. Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen.

I still dealt with many of my past issues, and I felt guilty for it. I still felt a lot of themy same insecurities: that I wasn’t good enough and that I would never be happy. I still felt lost and confused and like I might never find my way. And because all these insecurities were still following me around, I felt like it must have been me that was the problem. After all, everyone I knew always told me I should be having a great time, and everyone around me seemed to be having a great time. So, I internalized it. I told myself I was alone in it.

And since no one was talking about their own difficulties, how was I to know I wasn’t isolated?

I’m not saying it’s been bad – college has been a good experience for me. But I also wouldn’t argue that it’s been painless and all fun the way I imagined it would be. I’ve faced a lot of difficult things, and I’ve experienced a lot of pain. But I’ve also experienced personal growth in ways I never have before.

How are we to know when times are good if we aren’t acknowledging when they’re bad? It’s equally as important as it is cheesy to remember that there is no up without down.

So, where do we go from here? How can we reframe our college mindset?

 There’s no better place to start than to recognize it. To talk about it. And then comes setting healthy and realistic expectations for college—, like that it college is important for growth. Like that it college is a place that offers the opportunity to meet people in a way that is unique to other spaces. Like that collegeit is a place to fall down and a place to learn from mistakes. Like that collegeit is a place to learn about yourself in new and sometimes painful ways.

So what if it’s not the best four years of my life? It’s still valuable, and I still wouldn’t trade it for the world.

And who ever said the best four years of my life have to be consecutive anyway? I still have a lot of life to live and a lot of best years to have. 

By Bella Townsend

UC Berkeley student, poetry enthusiast and firm believer in Taco Tuesday.