“I just feel…like I’m missing out on something, I guess.” I was eating dinner with a friend, having one of our regular venting (and procrastinating) sessions. Somewhere in between talking about essays, complaining about boys, and dissecting conspiracy theories, we’d both become emotionally vulnerable enough to admit it: so far, first year was..kind of shitty. Now, this was definitely not the fault of other students or our school. Somehow, Hollywood, family friends, and YA novels had set us up with expectations for first year that were maybe a little unrealistic.
I can’t count the number of times I heard “those are the best years of your life!”, or “university is where you’ll meet your best friends”, or listened to stories of everyone meeting their future husband or wife at university. Sure, it made me excited for university beforehand, but a few months into university I realized I had made about three new close friends, changed my mind about what I wanted to do at least twice a day, had been to one lame party, and had zero romantic prospects, I felt like I was somehow doing it wrong.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t severely lacking in friends. I knew a few people from high school and had lots of people I was friendly with in my residence, clubs, and classes, but I’m talking about close friends, the friends I had been told I would meet that would be my future bridesmaids. I tried the old “talk to the people around you in your lectures” strategy, but never got more than a person to text to ask for notes when I missed class. I was never too worried about what I would end up majoring in, but it got awkward when every time a family friend asked me what I was doing at university, I responded with some form of “I don’t know, general Social Sciences right now” and a nervous laugh. I didn’t totally mind the whole “not being invited to parties” thing as I was generally pretty introverted and I knew most of the on-campus parties were sweaty, cramped, smelled like puke, and would be shut down pretty quickly, but from all the Hollywood movies I’d seen, I felt like there were some pretty great house parties going on that I never knew about. Even the low romantic prospects didn’t bother me; I did at least have a few interested parties, but unfortunately the group of people I was interested in and group of people interested in me never overlapped. As if the universe was in on this joke, I somehow started seeing a lot of (probably fake) statistics about how “most people meet the person they’ll marry between the ages of 18 and 23” and hearing family members talk about having kids at my age. Though I embraced the “strong independant woman who don’t need no man” motto, it was still there in the back of my mind.
Somehow, all these expectations for university I had, or had internalized from others, culminated in massive amounts of FOMO. Ironically, I realized over time that most of the things I thought I was missing out on either didn’t exist, or weren’t that great anyways. Once I stopped agonizing over all the people that I was sure I had so much in common with and would be best friends with, if I only could find them, I made the most of the friendships I had, and became close with people I didn’t expect to. After I’d accepted that almost everyone I knew that thought they knew what they wanted to study had changed their minds, I accepted that I could too. Once I stopped thinking about all the parties I wasn’t at, I was able enjoy movie nights and brunch dates with my friends. And though I still somewhat believe that my soulmate could be somewhere wandering around campus, I’m not frantically searching for them, no matter how many times I hear that my mum “wants to be a young grandma.”
Ironically, once I actually started talking to people about it, I realized it’s not that uncommon to feel like you’re doing/did first year wrong because X, Y, or Z didn’t happen how you expected it to. Though the night that I was talking with my friend it seemed we were the only ones that felt that way, I am now sure we were not. So many people have told me that they are so much happier, made so many more friends, or figured out what they wanted to do after first year, and that first year just wasn’t that great for them. Of course, some people will have the time of their lives during first year, and that’s genuinely wonderful for them, but if your reality isn’t looking like your expectations of first year, don’t panic; I can assure you, you’re not alone. You can give yourself permission to not live up to every expectation. It’s okay.
Though your first year may not be awesome, you still can be!