Well, you’ve stumbled through awkward icebreakers, survived the dreaded Freshman Flu, and are now deep into the endless sea of questionable life choices, otherwise known as the Freshman Year. This is the moment, the one you’ve hyped up in your head: time for reckless optimism, life-altering decisions, and, naturally, some embarrassingly bad calls. Upperclassmen, with their smug ‘I’ve been there’ wisdom, will make you believe they’ve mastered the art of adulthood. Spoiler: they haven’t.
Let’s be real, college seniors are a whole different breed. By the time we are in year two or three, we somehow convince ourselves that we’ve cracked the code on life, love, school, and, most importantly, where to find the cheapest coffee that doesn’t taste like dirt. Freshmen, with their bright-eyed naivety, eat it up. You think we’ve got it all figured out, but what you don’t realise is that we’re running on a diet of recycled advice, bad habits we never quite outgrew, and a wildly inflated sense of our own brilliance. And thus, the tradition of terrible, misguided advice continues.
“Sleep? Oh, you won’t have time for that.”
The infamous college myth. Like a campus-wide rite of passage, this little gem gets passed down year after year, making sleep deprivation sound like a badge of honour. Let me pop that bubble for you now. You are not in a marathon to see who can pull the most all-nighters. There are no gold stars for rolling into your 8:30 AM lecture looking like a zombie. Yet, here we are, perpetuating this ridiculous idea that college is all about the grind—dragging yourself to ‘Introduction to Torture by PowerPoint’ on three hours of sleep because “it builds character.” It doesn’t build character. It develops a caffeine addiction.
You’ll hit the harsh reality after your first week of academic madness when your body taps out and says, “Nope, we’re done.” Next thing you know, you’re face down, drooling on your notebook during ‘How to Format a WOC Essay,’ while everyone else is taking notes like fully functioning adults. The truth is sleep isn’t optional. It’s the only ingredient that keeps you from turning into a walking trainwreck.
“Definitely pick an 8:30 A.M. class. It’s not that bad.”
If there’s one thing upperclassmen seem to have perfected, it’s the art of pretending that 8:30 A.M. classes are not the cruel joke they really are. “You’ll get used to it,” they say, as casually as if they were talking about adjusting to a new shampoo. Here’s the thing, you will not. Unless you’ve secretly been a robot all this time.
Classes will slowly, but surely, drain every last drop of joy out of your soul. And the real kicker? These seniors aren’t waking up at 8 A.M. to drag themselves to class. Oh no, they’ve mastered the delicate art of scheduling all their commitments between 10:30 A.M. and 2:30 P.M. They’ll smile, give you a wink, and pass this sadistic wisdom along, knowing full well they’re setting you up for misery.
“Don’t stress about choosing a major. You have plenty of time.”
At first, this so-called freedom feels like a gift wrapped in shiny paper. “You get to explore,” they say. Explore, as if College is some kind of intellectual amusement park, and every class is a ride you can hop on with a sense of wonder and unburdened curiosity. And for a while, you do. You sign up for classes with titles like ‘Existential Philosophy’ and ‘The Sociology of Dystopian Fiction,’ convinced that any one of them could ignite your passion like some cinematic moment.
You’ll flip through your course catalogue as if it’s the menu at a buffet, sampling a bit of everything. But then, something shifts. Suddenly, you’re halfway through your third year, sitting at an 8:30 A.M. ‘Introduction to Macroeconomics’ class that you were sure you’d enjoy. Because, you know, economics is supposed to be ‘practical,’ and you realise that you have no idea what you’re doing. You’ve got just enough knowledge to be mildly interesting at parties, but not enough to actually specialise in anything.
It’s at this moment that the panic starts to creep in. You’ll begin to question every academic choice you’ve made up until now, wondering if maybe you should’ve just stuck to something ‘safe’ from the start. One week, you’ll be convinced that you were born to study international relations, imagining yourself as a future diplomat negotiating peace treaties. Next, you’ll have a meltdown in the middle of your anthropology lecture and seriously consider dropping out to pursue a career as a goat farmer in Himachal Pradesh.
But seniors won’t tell you the messy bits. They’ll conveniently skip the part where they were once sitting exactly where you are, half excited and half terrified, pretending to have life all mapped out while quietly unravelling at 3 A.M.
So here’s the thing, it’s okay to not have a grand plan. It’s okay to float for a while, like trying on different personalities in the world’s most chaotic dressing room. You won’t wake up one day with a neon sign flashing “THIS IS IT” over your head. College is messy, and that’s half the charm. Still, it helps to have a vague idea, something to tell yourself and your parents, that you’re not completely winging it. You’ll probably agonise over choosing a major as if picking the wrong one will lead to a life of eternal mediocrity, but there’s no definitive right or wrong. Just you, trying to make the best decision with the information you have. And honestly? You might still end up as a goat farmer, and that would be perfectly fine too.