Confused About College
Dear Siouxsie,
I know you’ve already talked about this, but I’m really stressed about college. I’m a junior, and right now everyone’s constantly talking about college, their future, and everything they want to do after senior year. It’s especially stressful for me, because I just don’t know what I want to study in college. I feel extremely pressured to decide exactly what I want my major to be as soon as possible, and it’s hard to have this “natural discovery” of what I want to do with my life. How do I deal with all of this?
Sincerely,
Confused about College
Dear Confused about College,
As a current junior as well, I would like to say something to everyone who knows a high-school junior prepping for college: we are very, very aware that we’re going to college. It’s incredibly stressful, we suddenly have far too many things to think about, and no matter how easy or mind-breakingly stressful your final two years of high school are, it’s a lot. I myself am buried in college prep, campus tours, self-reflections, meetings with counselors, course registration based on said meetings with counselors and said college prep, and while I’m really excited to go to college, I’m also really stressed out. Like I said, it’s a lot.
Now, to be fair, I do go to a school that heavily preps its students for the “best possible” colleges they can get into (I say “best possible” in quotes because it’s subjective, and I’ll get into that later), so I do have a bit of a bias when it comes to the college process. However, I do think that pretty much everyone reading this can relate on some level to the stress of all of this. Pressure, anxiety, stress, prioritization, realism, and ambition are just a few of the words sitting in and gently hammering the inside of my brain. If you’re talking to a junior about college, chances are they already were thinking about college before you even started the conversation. I don’t say this to demean anyone, I just want people to understand a little bit of what many of us are thinking about.
Now that I’ve given the insight, let’s talk a little bit about college itself. Let me say this very plainly: IT IS OKAY TO NOT KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT TO DO AS AN ADULT. Read it again. It is truly, honestly, okay to be unsure right now, and not know your major, and not know what you want to do with your “career opportunities”. Many, many adults, post-college, change their minds. Maybe instead of engineering, they want to pursue musical theatre. Or hum sea shanties to pebbles. Or make abstract sculptures about the artistic value of shrimp. Whatever. People change their minds, and it’s okay. It’s called being human.
CaC, you are truly not in the wrong here. If you really, truly have no idea what you want from your college experience, that’s okay. It’s not the end of the world, and while everyone around you might be absolutely dead set on their intentions for college, that’s just their experience. Either way, you will both end up at a college, and you will both have your own trajectories in life. Just because everyone else is in their own little world of success and stability, doesn’t mean you are failing because you’re not in that little world. It’s hard to ignore or deflect the nervousness and frenetic energy of people who are extremely driven to check off these lists, but you might have to.
It’s important to go into situations that you know are going to be centered around college with a sort of emotional barrier set up (sometimes, when you’re sick of being stressed out about college). Remind yourself that you’re just listening to people talk about things that are making them anxious, and it shouldn’t be too hard to either avoid people obsessed with college in general, or just ask your friends and family to not talk about college as much. Explain to people that it’s really stressing you out to hear constant talk about college, and that you just want some time away from the general anxiety of all of this. And if people don’t want to respect your needs- that’s a whole other conversation that requires a lot more effort.
One of my friends is going through a similar struggle as you. I was under the assumption that she was very clear about what she wanted from college: she’d spent most of her summer touring colleges across the US, she knows multiple people involved in the college world and is familiar with local colleges, and she seemed pretty knowledgeable on the entire subject of college. I’d talked to her a lot about college, the campus tours she’d been on, and what she knew, and we both seemed pretty grounded in our upcoming decisions. But suddenly, after the college process began, and serious discussions on our futures academically began, she confided in me that she was really unsure about what she wanted to study.
It goes to show that generally, even with the best information, we are all very unsure. I mean, depending on the person, but we are all quite nervous, and and it seems like every decision we make will fuck up our whole future. Let me remind you: this is patently untrue. Many people switch their major, or take classes that aren’t necessarily related to their major. This is one of the benefits of a liberal arts college, where you can major in, say, Musical Theatre, but also take a class in Printmaking. So even if you’re kind of unsure about your major, you can feel generally enriched by the overall subjects you’re taking. One option for people like you.
One thing I told my friend that she said seemed like a good idea was to base your decisions based on college, not the subject matter. What I mean by that is to stop boxing yourself in by what you want to study specifically, like I talked about in the previous paragraph. Think about schools that sound enticing to you overall: where are they located? Is the school conservative, or liberal? Religious? Do you want to be in a college town, a big city, or rural middle-of-nowhere? Start researching colleges- the websites are very easy to read, and if you’re unsure about something, ask your parent/guardian, or talk to your teacher. Looking at colleges will probably ease some of your anxiety, because they show you exactly what you would be studying if you were to go to that college.
Mostly, I think, it’s unsurely, and fear of the unknown, that hold us back. In any situation, pretty much. For a while, college is this shapeless, timeless, formless and undefined mass, and I don’t really think any of us will know what it’s like until we get there. You can do your best to get a sense of what’s going on at each college you’re applying to, but really, it’s okay to just say to yourself, “I don’t know right now, but I’ll figure it out.” Because we really, truly don’t know exactly what’s coming next. Just take it one day at a time, and know that nothing is forever. Hold onto joy and release the fear.
I recently read Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, and while I didn’t love the book overall, there were some truly beautiful moments and quotes. One of the quotes I felt really resonated with me was during a moment when the main character, not unlike us, is considering her post-adolescent future. “She wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her.” Life isn’t a constant in the way we think, and sometimes, neither is time. I’m turning seventeen this year, my third birthday in the pandemic, and I only just realized how long ago 2020 was. It’s heartbreaking, in a way, but it reminded me that time kept passing.
It isn’t the most kind reminder, but it’s oddly soothing to know that life cannot elude you forever. You must struggle with it at some point or another, but when time and life continue in earnest, and you’re reading all of your acceptance (or rejection) letters, and deciding what college to enroll in, and where you’re going to live in the fall, remember this time in your life. It will not be forever. It will not be as momentary or quick as you’d like it to be. And maybe this is quite maudlin and overly reflective, but I like to think that someday, someplace, sometime in the future, we’ll all be able to reflect on this brief but vaguely harrowing time of life, and be grateful that we lived through it, and made it to the other side.
Sincerely,
Siouxsie
P.S. Email me at desperatelyseekingsomeadvice@gmail.com so that I can send you more vaguely useful ramblings from my brain!