You won’t be everything you want in college. How do you deal with it?
Graduation season has passed for some, and yet even for those still completing their degree, now is as good a time as any to think about how our college years really went.
Often seen as the best four years of one’s life, college is the place to discover dreams and make them come true. However, it’s also the place where many of them go to die, whether due to a change in personality or a shift in priorities.
Many have lamented and will be lamenting the what-ifs of university life, but I won’t be one of them this time around. Rather, I hope to shed light on what helped me come to terms with not being everything I wanted in college.
“Too late” is a thing, and that’s okay
A lot of people like to say that it’s never too late to start something, and while I also hoped that was true, unspoken rules will tell you otherwise. There will be times when you realize it’s too late to climb up the org leadership ladders, too late to chase the last few grade points to secure a certain tier of Latin honors, too late to mesh into your block’s respective friend groups.
While all that sounds pessimistic, these realities simply reflect something inescapable in college: deadlines. Whether we like it or not, everything is timed, even if it’s true that we all can and should operate at our own pace.
Missing out on certain windows of time isn’t the end of the world, though, and that’s the part of “there’s no such thing as too late” that I can get behind. While you won’t be a stranger to missed opportunities and connections, it ultimately won’t be the end of the world even if it feels like it for a while. Being “too late” for one thing may even allow you to be early for something else, or simply to make more time for things that will matter to you eventually—before you even know it.
The price of rest should be a price you’re willing to pay
In line with the sentiment about being too late for or missing out on something, college has taught me just how steep the price of rest is. This price may come in the form of literal figures, as seen in how everyone around me in university, myself included, would frequent weekend markets to spend a little too much on overpriced thrifted goods in the name of vibe curation.
Others see rest as the indulgence in gastronomic delights, followed by a few too many rounds of drinks that may or may not lead to hangovers the morning after. Work-life balance can and does exist, but taking breaks weirdly feels heavy at times. On the surface level, it’s easy to be alarmed by how much consumerism is disguised and portrayed as rest and recreation.
Meanwhile, I personally realized just how steep the price of rest was when I saw what opportunities passed me by while I was taking breaks, or worse, when I was wasting my time on a kind of rest that didn’t replenish me. Doomscrolling was my drug of choice, which quickly turned to insecurity-consumed scroll sessions on LinkedIn and Facebook. As I saw people do and achieve more, I felt the weight of my wasted time on my back. Had I spent less time on social media and more on the hustle, maybe I’d create something wholly my “own,” I’d thought. However, leaving for my dream vacation less than 24 hours after graduating got me to appreciate the act of living and building a life that didn’t need to be described and quantified on my CV. Sure, “less rest” could’ve theoretically gotten me more to humblebrag about, but I find that I take most pride in having time to do things I love, anyway.
Independence is an illusion
Many see college as a time to practice autonomy and independence. “You’re on your own, kid,” says Taylor Swift, but that simply isn’t true. It takes a village to finish college—starting from the parents or scholarships covering hefty tuition fees to the professors that (hopefully) guide us through our learning journeys, not to mention all the friends and communities we come across along our way. I’ve learned how to be comfortable in my own skin throughout my stay in college, but I’ve also learned that I’m never going to be as alone as I think I’ve been.
Behind every high and low I go through is somebody else, some way, somehow. I’m able to write about what I want and get good enough grades because people believe in me enough to give me that kind of recognition. On the flip side, I feel like I’m falling behind because I see people way ahead. Comparison becomes a necessary evil, fostering camaraderie even at the expense of seeing others as benchmarks. It’s true that we should only compete with ourselves, but the existence of comparison doesn’t always have to beget that of competition. Oftentimes, comparison can simply be a sign of where you want to be headed. When I say independence is an illusion, I mean that we are unable to progress (or even regress) without the people around us, one way or another.
Anything but not everything
Coming from a major that prides itself in collaboration and interdisciplinary learning, I’d say that my years in college allowed me to explore and experiment more than most. My degree in communications technology management (a fancy way of saying marketing communications) led me to write for national publications, intern for companies ranging from corporations to startups, and maintain my interests in the humanities—particularly through literature and language-learning. I lived many different lives in a span of four years, but a part of me always asks how many more I could’ve lived.
One lucky strike or actual intention may have turned me into a content creator, business owner, or case competition winner. Perhaps I could’ve further concretized my pre-existing interest in social sciences and politics with a simple change in the electives I took. I think about the lives I could’ve lived and things I could’ve done differently, then feel like I should’ve done more or less. This is where regret seems to stem from best, and my younger self would’ve probably dwelled on these what-ifs and could’ve-beens.
While a part of me still does, I hold on to this: any change I could’ve made to hypothetically live these other lives might take away the sources of happiness and success I enjoy today. I tend to entertain alternatives as much as the next person does, but I no longer see the point in even thinking about giving up on the certain good for an uncertain, so-called “great.” That being said, if I could only name one thing I learned from these past four years, it’s that you can be anything but not everything you want to be. Closing the doors on something will always feel hard, especially with all the possibilities available to us. However, difficult choices eventually make life easier, or as best put by my mom, “hirap now, sarap later.”
