The best years of your life?

JACQUELINE DUA contributing columnist

You’re a child back at home living with your parents watching your favorite TV show. On that TV show, you see your favorite character go from being an immature high school student to a more confident and sophisticated college freshman. You see this transformation and think to yourself, “I can’t wait to go to college someday.” Then that day finally comes and you’re excited about your college acceptance letter and imagining all the fun things you’re going to do, the parties you’ll go to and the people you’ll meet. You think you’re going to college and will have the best years of your life. You’re going to leave your mark.

Since long before I could remember, “college is the best years of your life” has been a common saying. I grew up hearing it and it gave me something to look forward to when I started college. I imagined that when I started college, it was going to be an experience filled with wild parties, binge drinking, high spirit Greek life and extreme pranks. For example, the depictions of college life in movies, like “Life of the Party” with Melissa McCarthy, “House Bunny” with Anna Faris or “Neighbors” with Zac Efron. Then I got to college and had the biggest realization that all that stuff isn’t real.

The saying that “college is the best years of your life” is an overhyped and unrealistic belief that leads to unrealistic expectations. JMU has a reputation of being a party school. It’s ranked in 2023 as the no. 2 party school in Virginia by Niche. It’s nowhere near what college is depicted as in the media. Instead, it’s more like an extremely sanitized version of what you’re led to believe by the media. Also, college students can be just as immature as high schoolers — they just drink more.

Another flaw I came to realize about this belief is college can be a diverse place. There are international, STEM, art and ethnic minority students. But the experiences of college students shown in the media are usually a one-sided perspective of caucasian, male and middle to upper-middle-class freshmen. Because of this, the depiction of what the best years of life in college are supposed to look like is a false premise from the start — it’s an experience that cannot represent every college student.

Graduating senior Kyra Irani echoes this sentiment. She said she believes that her college experience doesn’t fit what’s shown in the media nor does she relate to that narrative.

“The stereotypical college experience is from the lens of a white person. I am an immigrant and a person of color. It changes the lens,” Irani said. “I also feel like the stereotypical college experience is viewed through Greek life as well, like when you look at college movies, so, it wouldn’t describe my college experience. But I think I did have the going to parties, meeting people and doing crazy shenanigans in your first year of college.”

I also realized this belief is harmful because it can lead to students feeling insecure and inadequate if they don’t think they’re living up to this false experience. Young people tend to determine the quality of their happiness by comparison to others in what’s known as comparison disease, a term coined by clinical psychologist Chad Radniecki.

In a 2018 article, Radniecki describes how young adolescent’s self-esteem can be impacted by comparison to others. He says there are many reasons for the development of low self-esteem and selfconfidence in teenagers. One common factor he cites is the tendency for some of teens to compare themselves negatively to others. Social media has had a huge impact in fostering this propensity and creating low self-worth. It feeds directly into the tendency to compare themselves to an external standard.

Another way this belief can be harmful is that it can lead to graduating students believing the best years of their lives are now behind them and there’s nothing else to look forward to in life — that they’ve hit their peak. However, I believe that as long as a person is living, their story is still being told and there’s always room for more adventure. If college is truly the best years of someone’s life, many people may feel like they have unrealized potential since many students don’t live the stereotypical college experience. This feeling of unrealized potential could’ve even been exacerbated by the pandemic. Due to the pandemic, some people might feel like the best years of their life were wasted because they had no opportunity to experience all college has to offer.

Senior Tiarra Alston said she believes that, because of the pandemic, she didn’t have the media-depicted college experience. Since she came to JMU in 2019, and since COVID-19 started in the 2020 spring semester, she spent her early college years at home. Due to this, she said she felt she had half a freshman year. Because Alston was home all the time and didn’t see her friends, she said she felt disconnected and had to make new friends once the pandemic ended. However, by her junior year, she came to realize that her college years were the best of her life. She defines her best years as having a sense of community.

“I met a whole new group of friends, I got more active in clubs, I became involved in my major and figured out what I wanted to do,” Alston said. “That’s when I knew I belonged here and that this was a good experience for me.”

In contrast, Irani said she doesn’t believe her college years were the best of her life — instead, she believes the best for her is yet to come. She defines the best years of her life as the strength of the bonds she has with the people around her.

“These years have been great, but I think that these years are years of growth, and it can be a little uncomfortable,” Irani said. “I think I haven’t had enough time to socialize during my growth, and I’m a social person … The major part of these defining changes of my life have kind of finished. I’m sort of feeling it out now.”

My college experience was anything but stereotypical. I started college as a transfer student and had fun partying my first year. During my college years during the pandemic, I did hospital clinicals in personal protective equipment and was isolated on campus. Then last year, I had the fun of experiencing dance bars and watching jello wrestling. My college experience has shaped who I am today, but I’ll never see it as the best years of my life. Instead, they’re the stepping stones toward what will become my best years.

Never believe anything you see on TV to have any semblance of reality. I let myself get fooled twice by this. High school and college were overhyped with unrealistic expectations for me. Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Also, whether you think you’ve had the best years of your life or have yet to live them, your story is still being written, so there will always be something to look forward to.

CONTACT Jacqueline Dua at duaja@ dukes.jmu.edu. For more editorials regarding the JMU and Harrisonburg communities, follow the opinion desk on Instagram and Twitter @Breeze_Opinion.