My most nostalgic moods tend to occur when I’m unhappy or stressed, allowing me to revert back to a time in my life when things seemed happier. I wax nostalgic on my last two years of high school. I remember being involved, happy and lacking in the kind of real-world doubts I harbor now. As I inch closer to my college graduation, I look for that same nostalgia from my college experience, but I find myself wanting. I don’t look back longingly, sadly, on those first years in college—I barely remember them passing by. In my last few weeks on UF’s campus, I’ve tried desperately to experience everything that Gainesville, my friends and my university has to offer. But I’ve nearly run out of time. It seems that as soon as I felt settled, comfortable and happy in Gainesville that it was suddenly time to leave. I spent so much time acclimating, adjusting and feeling nostalgic about high school that I did my college experience a disservice.
Everyone transitions into college differently; several factors in my life made my personal transition more difficult than most. I spent most of my freshman year in an unsettling melancholic mood, passing the majority of my time sleeping. I became so fixated on my own unhappiness, deciding that I could never be as happy here as I was back home. I looked back with such fondness on old friends and past experiences, never giving myself the opportunity to make new memories. It took me almost two years to realize that my current unhappiness was clouding my memory. Past events are always more exaggerated in reminiscence. I couldn’t see beyond the fondness I had for a time that seemed better than it truly was. I had a pathological case of nostalgia—self-fulfilling and cyclical as I wallowed in moroseness and lacked any motivation to become involved at UF.
Nostalgia is a complicated feeling: part wistful and part sad, grasping at straws for “the good old days.” I found myself stuck between the past and the future, refusing to acknowledge that I was steadfastly ignoring the present. When nostalgia proved too grim a reminder of all the things I wasn’t doing, daydreaming about the future was the quickest escape. I surmised that once I graduated, I’d be much happier. Standing on the boundary line between college and adulthood, I’m more scared than I’d hoped. At times, I feel like I wasted much of my college experience feeling lost and remiss, wondering what could’ve been if I’d made different choices. Simultaneously, I feel that our culture puts entirely too much pressure on this brief spout of quasi-adulthood to be the greatest time in a young person’s life. Maybe we’ve become disengaged with the mundane. Certainly, college is a time of extreme growth and change, but immense pressure to have life-changing experiences can set us up for disappointment.
Yet, despite my initial unhappiness with my time at UF, I don’t regret those feelings of negativity and self-pity. For me, college was somewhat life-altering, just not in the way I’d always expected. I learned that change is difficult and terrifying, and you can’t always predict how you’ll react when facing it head-on. My personal growth was painful, robbing me of time and potential happy memories. But I comfort myself with the knowledge that I have grown immensely.
When I feel nostalgic about high school now, I harbor fondness for the good times and can laugh about the bad. In leaving UF, I feel much the same as when I left high school—blissfully unaware. In the future, I’m certain I’ll look back on my time at UF with a nostalgic twinge, but I know now to hold on to that wistfulness for only a moment; I refuse to let nostalgia keep me from experiencing life anymore. At times, life feels to be speeding past me as I reach more milestones. It’s difficult to ground myself in the present while being true to my ever-planning personality, but I’ve learned what can happen when infected with more than a twinge of nostalgia. The only way I’ve been able to cope is to at least attempt to let go of my regret and make an honest effort to enjoy myself. It’s a feeling I’ve neglected for far too long.
Photo credits: www.themediaoctopus.com