Collegiate myths

I've been a Penn State student for almost two months now (3 if you count summer session), and like anyone starting a new part of her life, I came into college with expectations. Some were minor like, "of course I'll have salad every single night!" and other times I was convinced after a month of going to class and taking tests I'd be a completely changed individual. Sometimes I was on the right track, but I'm still me, and I still reflect in the randomness that is my blog, so just bear with me here and my crazy expectations about college life.

1) Friendships aren't like Wal-Mart...you can't get anything you'd ever want in ten minutes or less
Yes, there are thousands of people my age to talk to. Many of them are looking for friends. But just because people are open doesn't mean you can walk up to someone, go, "so...how about them parties?" and expect an instant best friendship. Insta-friends are somewhat similar to instant coffee: crappy and leaving you with a headache two hours later. Good friends need to brew, simmer, and insert another witty coffee metaphor here. It took me at least a year to get to where I am now with my current good friends. Some might see enough commonalities in discovering they were just as drunk as Billy, Bob and Joe, but knowing who's going to make a true impact on your life takes time. We're not a reality TV show here--we can't edit out the small talk.

2) Just because you have three hours in between classes doesn't mean you will study for three hours.
There was once a naive little freshman who so innocently believed she wouldn't have to study at night because she had a free period from 10-1:25. Seems like enough of a chunk to cover essays and tests galore, right? I think Dr. Cox from Scrubs has something to say about this:

It turns out, what happens in these lovely breaks in between classes, is anything but studying. Maybe I've been productive enough to run like a crazy person on a treadmill, and if I'm feeling truly ambitious, I'll bring a book from English class to read on the stationary bike. But what usually ends up happening is our friends huddle in our dorm room and laugh over slutty Halloween costumes. Homework seems less of a pressing issue when there's a group of friends ignoring it together. Why write about the importance of lock motifs in Lolita when you have to decide between being a devil or "pair of dice lost" for Halloween? It's a legit dilemma here. But then there's that whole eating thing. You may think there's no need to ever enter the dining hall--that grabbing lunch at the convenience store and chowing down over flash cards will save you hours. Ah, but then you discover that your friends have the exact same free time as you and they all want to grab some excessive amounts of frozen yogurt healthy salads before their next class. I can probably stuff my face with lunch in ten minutes if I'm alone. But with friends, we end up talking about Kim Possible and other sophisticated matters, and a bowl of soup can end up lasting forty minutes. Not to say that I don't appreciate eating with other people, since braving the dining hall alone can be quite the scary feat. But just because I could technically do all my homework before nighttime, doesn't make it a reality.

3) Salad may be available at the dining hall, but so is ice cream, pizza, heart attacks in a sandwich...
I, like every other female in the universe, have a love/hate relationship with food. I may dress up a salad to make it look enticing, but cut back on fatty dressing, and it still feels like I'm chewing on grass. I'm still a fruit-ivore, but I'm not entirely sure it balances out when I top a few strawberries on a bowl of creamery ice cream. I came into the dining hall that first night confident that I would stick to a strict diet, ignore the lovely mac 'n cheese, and be the skinniest person since Twiggy. This may work for people who don't do a happy dance every time they see a chocolate creme egg everywhere they go, but temptation cannot be resisted every minute of every day. At home, I ate what was served to me, nothing more, nothing less. At the dining hall, if you eat everything that's served to you, you'd be able to try out for the sumo wrestling team. Grownup decisions start off with realizing you can't stuff your face with burgers every night and still be able to fit in size 4 jeans. Even if you can run for...ten minutes...

Minutes, people. Not miles. My life.

4) Professors will not make you gold-medal winner of the world if you do an assignment early.
Even if I do spend my mornings gym-ing and playing epic games of War with friends, I still try to get on top of my assignments. Since I was lazy this semester and opted to only take 4 classes, this has proven to be relatively do-able. Plus, I admit, I do get a slight thrill out of writing essays, and I should stop trying to deny that I am my parents here. It's bound to happen that I do everything two weeks in advance and write to-do lists that start with "write a to-do list." Although I'm sure my English professor appreciates people who do their work and all that jazz, what I expected at first was this:

Professor: "Class, you could all stand to be more like this girl here and hand in A worthy papers before they're assigned. Gold stars, Kira!"

Apparently gold stars are a thing of the past and are buried underneath that sandbox I played in during kindergarten recess. Humph.

What really happened, looked more like this:

"Class, there's been a change in the syllabus. Instead, I want you to finish the book, and I'm canceling your short response." Change in the syllabus, to any college student, is equivalent to the Jaws soundtrack. You mean to say, I just did work that wasn't even assigned? And no references to her lovely students who keep themselves on track? What is this, adulthood? I guess those external pats on the back should be buried in the same sandbox.

5) Classes are not designed to torture you and make you the most stressed out person ever in the world.
Yes, professors may give tests to make sure we're not watching episodes of Heroes instead of studying (ahem), but they're not interested in making us all walking GPA's. Of course everyone wants their students to succeed and accomplish, but unlike high school, that doesn't take precedence. My professors have stressed that we should think, and question, and not take everything at face value. We've observed scientific studies not as what we should all grow up to accomplish, but to ask "is this a valid study? What variables might mess up the results? And are peer reviewers always that self-congratulatory?" Critical reading/thinking, as it turns out, is not just on the SATs. It's like germs--it's everywhere. Okay, maybe critical thinking is a little cooler than germs. But I'm just saying. Professors don't have some malicious goal to make us have to pull all-nighters to cram for challenging tests. Even if your English teacher does have a suspiciously evil laugh.

So I still have a lot to learn in college, but thus far I've learned not to expect so much. Oh, and that worms make kids stupid. Who knew?

Namaste.