Pete (Dave Franco) and Teddy (Zac Efron), best buds in “Neighbors,” a movie that depicts a college experience I envy.
Every day after work, my route home takes me past my old college.
During these trips by my alma mater, I’d like to say there’s been at least a few instances where I gazed wistfully at the campus, reminiscing about my time there. I mean, this seems like the type of thing that should happen, right? College is, after all, prime real estate for making some of the most indelible memories of your 20s.
Each time I’ve driven past the school, though, I’ve never cast such a gaze upon it.
Honestly, it’s pretty astounding how infrequently I’ve thought about college since graduating in 2010. I feel a little weird about that. Not possessing strong, positive feelings about college feels tantamount to not possessing strong, positive feelings about “Stranger Things” or Chick-fil-A; which is to say, you’re standing apart from the masses and can’t help but wonder why.
I think one of the reasons I’m not sentimental about college is because I never managed to achieve the same level of connectedness to the campus as many of my peers did. Whereas several of my classmates lived on and around campus, I commuted for four years. And if there’s a surefire way to make college just feel like four more years of high school, it’s commuting.
In retrospect, I think one of the quintessential aspects of college is moving away, even if it’s only across town, and experiencing life on your own, in the company of peers doing the exact same thing. I think connections get made in that situation, both with your classmates and your campus, as a second home. And I suspect that that situation is where a lot of those indelible memories I referenced get made.
Going into college, I clearly underrated the importance of moving away… but if there’s something I overrated, it’s how prepared I would need to be for the academic rigors of the experience. Throughout high school, teachers endlessly hyped up college courses, promising that they were going to be more difficult than my classmates or I could possibly imagine. These teachers were a lot like characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe breathlessly talking up Thanos, declaring how dangerous he was in the buildup to “Avengers: Infinity War.”
While Thanos may have lived up to the hype, college courses did not. College turned out to be a pattern of me thinking that next semester was when things were going to get tough… and that pattern persisted until there were no semesters left. In fairness, there were three or four courses that did turn out to be legitimately challenging and ended up stretching me intellectually. Emerging from those classes at the end of the semester with a passing grade, having overcome the many challenges they posed, was a triumphant feeling. I just wish my entire college experience, from an academic standpoint, had been a chain of those feelings. And it wasn’t.
Aside from the diploma that the aforementioned courses culminate in, I think the other thing people look forward to taking away from college is close, lifelong friendships. It goes without saying that this would be among one’s expectations going into the experience. Between being aware of people in real life who met some of their best friends in college to seeing depictions of college friendships in movies like “Neighbors,” you definitely hope that you, too, will meet people that you’ll end up hanging out with for years after class has dismissed.
For me, I met a lot of terrific people during college and was grateful to know them while that experience unfolded. Quite simply, college was better for having been in their company. However, few of those friendships have made it beyond that time. And for the ones that did, I wouldn’t expect any of those people to characterize me as being the Goose to their Maverick, or the JD to their Turk.
That’s how I feel, too. And that’s OK. In college, you may aspire to have a friendship like Zac Efron and Dave Franco’s… but it’s not always in the cards.
Despite what I’ve written, if I could (cue Cher!) tuuuuuuuurn back time and attend a different college, I wouldn’t. I’d still enroll at the same one. Why? Well, my college did position me to enter my field of choice, communications, and I’m in the midst of a career that fulfills me. More importantly, having attended the college that I did was what broke the ice for me and my wife, who also went to that school (albeit after I did.)
I’m grateful for the role my college played in those aspects of my life… even if I’ll always be underwhelmed by the time I actually spent there. Ultimately, for as romanticized as attending college is in our culture, I think it’s important, and healthy, to state that the following can be an outcome of that experience, too:
Sometimes, college isn’t the best four years of your life.
Sometimes, it’s just four years of your life.
EVE OF STEVE 