Dear Readers,
I was lucky enough to grow up in a small Pennsylvania town where I was able to graduate high school with the same classmates that I went to kindergarten with. Every September welcomed the thrilling ritual of maxing my mom’s credit card out at Staples on the last day of summer, hearing the gossip about each of my teachers from my older brother and picking out the cutest first day outfit (so that all the boys that I had been friends with since we were in diapers would notice how much they missed me during break). This experience was always perfectly encapsulated in the saying “back to school.”
As I was flying out to UCLA from 3000 miles away, I thought that some of these rituals and the overall feeling of being “back” to a classroom might travel with me. But, I scrambled to find a Target within a 30 mile radius that carried pens, realized my professors had no ratings on BruinWalk and went to my first day of classes in my PJ’s already exhausted from a week of rush. The feeling of complete unfamiliarity and lack of routine caused a series of colossal internal panics that truly exposed to me the myth and damage of the simple phrase “back to school”.
But, everyone else seemed to just be going with the flow! In every building I stepped in, friends and friends of friends were making plans for their free time, as I wondered if I would ever have a full nights’ sleep again. Noone else was verbalizing the intense anxiety in the gyms and classrooms that used to be my safe haven, so I had to be the only one struggling with adjusting, right?
Well, apparently people just have a lot easier of a time hiding their feelings than me…
According to the Harris Poll survey, “The First Year College Experience,” 60% of freshmen said they wished they had “more help getting emotionally ready for college.” Just knowing this statistic makes me feel less crazy. As much as I was prepared for the academic rigor of (the number one public) university, my AP classes and numerous high school extracurriculars could never have primed my social stamina to live in a brand new city with 30,000 brand new faces. In that same survey, over a third of students claimed intense feelings of stress or anxiety. A common misconception about the stress on college campuses is that it is all relating to school and classes, but as I delved deep in social events and club info sessions this idea was immediately disproved. Even simple everyday needs, like trying to get food at busy dining halls, added unnecessary amounts of stress to the burden I was already carrying. When every aspect of your life changes, overwhelming is an understatement.
The bottom line is, college is a time of continuous lifestyle changes and a lack of a defined comfort zone. It is impossible to say freshmen are going “back” to something, as everything in our lives is moving 100 miles per second.
Sincerely,
A college freshman.