What They Don't Tell You About College

What they don't tell you about college is that it smells awful in the dorms. None of the pamphlets prepared me for the stench of genitals wafting through the hallways every morning, or the way your pillow always manages to smell like feet no matter how often you wash it. It might have been nice to be prepared for the fact that people apparently don't find it in their hearts to remove their own wads of public hair from the shower drains, or that sometimes the janitors just ignore it for weeks on end. But maybe that's just me.

What they don't tell you about college is that no matter how much you hated wherever you lived before, you're going to miss it at some point. For me, the word "hate" is too mild. Public school was not kind to me; I was bullied consistently from the time I was 8 on through my high school graduation, and being smart didn't get very far socially, even with the smart kids. My town was four hours away from any substantial city, and was encased in a valley in the Rocky Mountains, so feeling like you were caught in an empty fish bowl wasn't far off from the truth. It rarely rained, the foliage was sparse and usually parasitic, and the summers were so dry your hands looked like they were covered in flesh-colored scales. But it was familiar, and familiarity is few and far between 1000 miles from where you grew up.

What they don't tell you about college is that it's nothing like what you'd expected, but you can't imagine a better way to spend the first four years of your adulthood. About halfway through my first semester, as a freshman, I seriously considered dropping out and getting a service industry job to pay the bills while I penned the next great American novel. That first semester I was taking all core classes, and I had a grand total of one friend who was only really my friend because neither of us had met anyone else yet, and I couldn't remember ever feeling more completely alone. But for all the genital stench, all the unexpected homesickness, and all the grandiose expectations of my fabulous college life, I can honestly say that college has made me a better person. I am no longer that angry, deeply wounded kid who left Colorado with a chip on her shoulder and an empty glass. I am now an angry, on-the-mend young adult who stays out until 4am to go for a walk with someone she barely knows, washes dishes for two hours to film a silly cooking video with her roommates, and writes slam poetry about peeing standing up and being an angry, on-the-mend young adult. And honestly, who could ask for anything more out of their college experience?