My college years were full of both excitement and chaos.
I attended a small liberal arts college with only 800 students in total.
It was easy to make friends right away, but there was still a clique mindset that wasn’t far off from my experience in high school. I feel bad for the kids that fell between the cracks, the ones that weren’t lucky enough to naturally fall into friendship with a large group of students like I did. It must have been lonely for them to return to their dorm rooms from class everyday without knowing a single soul to talk to, not even your roommate. Since it was a liberal arts college, our classes weren’t easy either. By the time I was a sophomore, I was already taking classes that were 3-hour seminars like in graduate school. Even though I have yet to attend grad school, I know that I got a lot of important preparation in my undergraduate studies. I didn’t struggle as much with academics as I did with simply living on campus. When I reached a point where I lost interest in partying, having it thrust into your face every evening started to get daunting. Not only that, but you couldn’t go back to your room and relax in comfort. We had no control over our HVAC thermostats and all of the buildings were set to essentially the same temperature that only changed slightly with the seasons. I went to school in the south where it was often hot outside regardless of what time of the year it was. I remember always feeling hot in my room so I used fans liberally. Having access to a controllable thermostat would have made living on campus less miserable as time went on.