episode 1: the case of the underwhelming college experience
Dear Clara,
I just finished my second year of college and am not having the best time. I like it a lot, but can’t help feeling like I’m not really getting the best experience I could. Also I’m already in a lot of debt (a LOT), and I just feel like I’m spending so much money on an experience I don’t love as much as I should. I don’t know what to do. It’s too late in the year to transfer — plus I’ve already committed to going abroad to Australia in the fall. Plane tickets have been bought.
Do I drop out and take some time to myself? My parents are no help and just tell me to stick it out, even though I’m the one who will be riddled with 100k of debt at age 22. What do I do? How do I stop feeling miserable?
Dear college student,
I have good news for you! College is weird and difficult! If you are worried about your future and vaguely dissatisfied with your present, you’re probably doing things right. Did I say good news? I meant mostly-depressing-but-also-somewhat-validating news.
College is one of those things that people build up like crazy because we as a society fetishize youth or something. The self doubt and the loneliness and the uncertainty get instagram-filtered in hindsight, but when you’re actually in the middle of it, it sucks.
When you look back on high school now, do you think “Good god, those were extremely far from being the best years of my life!”? Because you will probably feel similarly about college. I liked college better than high school, but I still had a lot of angst and a lot of free-floating melancholy and a lot of laser-focused sadness. So retire this dusty old thought that you “should” be “loving” your “experience.” That’s just something the old and out of touch people tell you because we’ve all forgotten what college is like.
Of course, high school is free, and you pretty much have to go or the truancy police will come kick you out of the mall food court and drag you back to homeroom by your collar. (Is this a thing? I never skipped school because I was a big nerd, so everything I know about truancy is from cartoons).
College is another story. Plenty of super successful people don’t have college degrees, and debt definitely sucks. But I still think you should stay in school. The main thing is that you’ve already started your degree, so you might as well finish it. Even if it’s some totally useless degree, having a bachelor’s in anything gives you a certain amount of credibility when you’re applying for jobs. You’re going to be in some debt regardless, and paying that debt off is going to be easier if you don’t have to answer the “two years at XYZ college? what’s that about?” question in all your job interviews.
I love recommending time off, because I took a semester off in college and it was hella good for me. But I hesitate here, because you’re concerned about money, and taking a semester off isn’t necessarily a great financial move. “Taking time for yourself” is expensive. Unless you move home, you have to figure out rent, and you’ll want to get a job, and instead of getting time to experiment, you might just feel like you’re spinning your wheels. If you can think of a way to take a semester off that works for you money-wise and will make you feel like the master of your destiny, go for it. Paid internships might be a thing to look into, at some point.
But first, you’re going to Australia! I am psyched that you are studying abroad. Definitely, definitely go abroad. Go to Australia and go freaking crazy. Make friends with all the big spiders. Get a really bad sunburn that will someday turn into skin cancer and kill you (we call this “Chekhov’s sunburn”). Participate in some binge drinking. (Why are all of my Australia travel recommendations deadly-sounding? Australia, are you guys okay?)
I am firmly of the opinion that if you are miserable you should change something. Going abroad is great because it forces you to change a ton of things. And if you’re still miserable when you get back, you should try to figure out what isn’t working.
Do you hate your academics? I know you’re two years in, and it feels too late to switch, but let me tell you a story: One of my best friends in college realized in March of her sophomore year that she hated everything about her major and wanted to switch from International Relations to Psychology. She talked to a lot of deans and somehow convinced them, one by one, to let her drop all her classes mid-semester and enroll in new ones, so that she’d be able to get all of her requirements done for Psychology before she graduated. It was fully insane, but she was a million times happier once she was studying something she liked. These things are possible! Or, if it’s legitimately impossible, you can still take classes outside your department. You could probably pick up a minor in something cool, or just make friends with a lot of professors.
Perhaps, you don’t hate your major, but your friends are all assholes! I had this happen! I realized at some point sophomore year that my main group was being super rude to me for no reason. So after going on a long walk, and calling my mom, and crying by the river, and a bunch of other steps, I decided screw them and reached out to the friends I’d made the summer before (when I was — you guessed it — studying abroad).
(Reading over this, I’m also just remembering that sophomore year is a sort of weird gross year. You might find that next year your misery evaporates naturally. Although I was also pretty sad my junior year, come to think of it. Sorry, I know that doesn’t help.)
Maybe something else sucks. The point is, you’ve got to figure out what sucks and change it. It might be a good change, or it might be the totally wrong change and you’ll regret the change immediately, but you will at least then feel like you’re taking steps.
You should also see what kind of therapy resources your college has, because therapy is awesome and college is one of the few times in life that it’s usually easily accessible and oftentimes free. Even if you just see someone twice and sit there for an hour saying “I hate my life for reasons unknowable”, a therapist is trained in pulling thoughts out of your head. They will probably help you discover something floating around in there.
This is probably the first of many many letters that I conclude by recommending therapy, because I fucking love therapy.
Enjoy Australia! Or don’t, and come back to the States, take some neat internship, (temporarily) quit school, discover your passion for jazz flute, return to school to get your degree in having-a-degree, graduate, and join us in the world. Pay off your debt and fight to make college affordable. (Because holy shit, can we talk about that for a second?) And then, someday, die of skin cancer, surrounded by your miserable 21 year old grandkids. Good luck!
Do you also want advice from Clara? You can fill out this google form and I’ll answer your questions! Questions edited for grammar and clarity. Don’t take it personally. But if I capitalize ‘bell hooks’ or something like that, please call me out on it because I did that once and it was embarrassing.
