On a chilly fall evening one month into my first semester at Harvard, I sat alone in my dorm room, talking to my parents on Skype. My roommate was away and there was a party taking place at a nearby dorm. Music was blaring, strobe lights were flashing and freshmen were consuming beverages of questionable legality. I told my mom that the people who lived there had a party almost every night. She recommended that I “check it out.” I protested at first, but once I realized the alternative was sitting on my bed and counting the cracks in the wall, I took my mom’s advice, put on pants, and went next door. This is what teenagers are supposed to love doing, I thought. According to Seventeen magazine, being shoved up against sweaty people in cramped rooms to the beat of the newest Nicki Minaj song is a beloved college pastime. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t enjoy myself.
Parents, teachers, friends, and even Seventeen magazine frequently say that college is supposed to be the best years of our lives. Throughout high school, we dream about college, yet become disillusioned when we arrive on campus and realize it’s not as perfect as we once thought. After being told that this is where we will meet our lifelong friends and discover who we truly are, reality can be disheartening. It takes a long time to become accustomed to your new surroundings, discover that nobody else will do your laundry, develop your identity, and form solid relationships. The problem is that no one wants to admit this.
For most of freshman year, I thought I was completely alone. I would speak to people in my entryway, classes and clubs, but I wasn’t confident I had forged any lasting connections. And I felt guilty. I go to the best college in the country, have limitless opportunities at my fingertips, but I still couldn’t honestly answer peoples’ inquiries about my experiences. They’d ask me, “Do you love it?” I’d nod, smile and give a description of my favorite classes, the clubs I’d joined and the interesting people I’d met, but that was never the whole story. Even when I sought guidance from people whose job it was to help socially inept students like myself, I still came away from these meetings feeling like I was the only one experiencing this lack of deep connections. They were supportive and had my best intentions in mind, but were either unaware, or unable, to communicate the fact that many other freshmen were feeling the same way.
Social media only exacerbates the problem. Everyday I was bombarded with tweets, photos, and Facebook updates that only furthered my feelings of inadequacy. All of these people seemed to be having the time of their lives with their new friends. Once I arrived home this summer, however, my closest high school friends who had authored many of those tweets and Facebook updates, confirmed that they felt exactly as I did. None of their new friendships had yet reached the depth of connection that my high school friends and I had established after 12 years of shared school and life experiences. And really, how could they? How could one hope to establish in nine months the kind of relationships that had developed naturally over the course of many years?
While there are definitely some people who have no difficulty transitioning to college, it shouldn’t be expected that their experiences are the norm. Regardless of the number of people tagged in someone’s photos, you don’t get the full story about how they are doing until you have a real conversation with them. Even then, people are tentative to admit they are struggling for fear it will signal their personal shortcomings. As a result, too many things are left unsaid.
It took some time, but I have finally found my place at Harvard. You just have to follow your own path. I didn’t meet my closest friends at a raging party or at Insomnia Cookies at two in the morning. I found them all around campus: in Annenberg, at my favorite clubs, in my freshman entryway and in my classes. And this motley group of people became the reason that I was able to get through my freshman year. Even though I still miss my family—especially my dog—my friends here are the ones that get me through the tough times. They made me realize that I am not alone. I owe them everything.
For a long time, I had to fake my answer to the question every college freshman gets: “Do you love it?” I didn’t want to let people down with a lackluster description or make them think I didn’t know how to make friends. But now it is time to be honest. We need to stop glossing over the less appealing aspects of college. Even at Harvard, there are times when you will feel lonely, inadequate, or just tired of being “on” all the time. But there is nothing wrong with that. What I wish I had known earlier—and what Harvard needs to do a better job of communicating to freshmen—is that deep and meaningful relationships take time, but things will get better. They will always get better.
Image credit: Jacob Rus/Wikimedia