Chaos Precedes Change

“All great changes are preceded by chaos.”

~Deepak Chopra

                Friday night, March 6, 2015 started out like most weekends for my roommate and I. Our minds and bodies were utterly exhausted from the week we had just finished and, though we still had a weekend of work and papers that needed to be done ahead of us, we found ourselves sitting down in front of the television. She on her black bean bag chair, me on my lime green yoga ball, both of us with our phones in our hands and only half paying attention to the comedy we had playing on one of the two TVs that sit on our make-shift entertainment center.

             

   Being both mentally and physically exhausted, we talked about nothing while absentmindedly playing games on our phones. Everything from our current relationships to the exams we were currently studying for came up, and eventually the movie we were watching invoked a new topic of conversation.

                I, being bored, had popped my copy of Son-In-Law in the DVD player. My roommate, who had never seen it before, made a comment about co-ed housing. We chatted about our opinions on the idea of it for a few minutes before one of the main characters in the movie, Becky, made a remark about how even though she was at college she wasn’t going to change. Off handedly, I stated, “Something always changes when you go to college. If it doesn’t, then you’re doing it wrong.”

                “Yeah, seriously,” replied my roommate, who was now grinning while she made virtual salads on her phone.

                Being high level college students, we’re able to look back on our last few years here at the university we attend and see just how much we’ve changed. She, in her junior year, and I, in my senior, have experienced much over our college career. We started talking about it. About how we went from those shy, awkward freshmen pictured on our student IDs to the women we are today. How we went from thinking we knew everything and really knowing nothing to thinking we know nothing but constantly amaze ourselves with just how much stuff we really do know from our classes.

                They say middle school and high school are the most difficult times of your life and that college is the best time of your life. Well, let me tell you something, even those best times come with a few rain showers. Not everything is all peachy keen when you get to college.

             

   When you’re in high school you think, “Oh, college is going to be great! It’s going to be like having an apartment and I’ll be able to do whatever the heck I want.”

                The reality of it is that you realize just how much you really kind of liked living with your parents…then you develop a sense of independence. You get used to living away from them and then, when you return home for break –for the first time, and every other time after that –you are conflicted. Conflicted because you feel like you need to check-in with your parents while you’re home but know that you are more than capable of doing what you want, when you please. Knowing that you don’t need curfews or check-in calls…yet, secretly you do actually kind of like when mom or dad calls to ask, “Where are you?” Even though you may be living over six hours away and your answer to that question doesn’t really matter because they can’t really do anything about where you’re at in that moment any way.

                College is a journey. There’s no doubt about it. Sometimes you even feel like you’re Gilgamesh slaying Humbaba, or Odysseus escaping Polyphemus. Other times you feel like superman with a bunch of kryptonite stuffed down your pants.

                When you first enter college you’re like Mike, from Monster’s University, on his first day at campus. You’re in awe. You’re amazed at everything around you. You feel like you just stepped into an entirely new world and, in some cases, you have. The main thing on your mind is that you finally made it out of high school and that you’re now officially a college student.

               

                Going in you have such high expectations. You think everything’s going to be perfect. I mean, you’re away from home. Away from mom and dad. Away from whatever place you’ve been saying for the past four or so years that you couldn’t wait to get out of. How could it not be perfect?

                In your dreams, you see college like it’s your kingdom. You think that your dorm room will be your palace. Like you’ll finally have all this space to spread your wings.  

               

                But then you unlock that dorm door and you quickly realize that it’s more like this:

             

                So you start your job search so you can create that luxury life you want. Yet, between tuition payments, the upkeep of your car, and social events, you’re consistently broke. So you resign to surviving off cafeteria food for as long as possible.

          

      However, you soon realize that eating a sandwich every day for lunch gets old. So you go on an ultimate hide-and-seek game with the spare change you know is lying somewhere in your room and you end up taking everything you find to Burger King/McDonalds.

           

     

                And slowly, over the course of your first semester, you start to change and people back home start asking what happened to you. Some people even seem confused as to who you are at first.

               

                And you don’t know if you should care or not, because you are finally starting to feel comfortable in your own skin.

                You start developing this confidence that you didn’t even know you had before. Suddenly you feel like you could take on the world and become some sort of superstar activist. Felling like you could start some kind of ultimate awesome revolution against ‘the man’.

But then you realize the people you really want to start a revolution against are the ones questioning your major. So what if you chose one of the ‘worthless’ majors? Those people telling you how hard it’s going to be for you to get a job after graduation, how little the content of your classes matter, and keep asking, “So what exactly are you planning on doing with that degree?” are nothing but peasants anyway. They don’t know what they’re talking about and you feel the need to inform them of just how valuable your area of study is. So you shoot off random facts about how it ties into humanity and everyday life and they just stand there like, “Is she crazy?” or “Did I break her?”

                So you buckle down to show people just what you can do and how you’re not wasting your time...

              

                …but then you overwork yourself and get so stressed out that you realize your best friend isn’t your roommate, or that guy you think you might like, but is really the precious cup of coffee that keeps you awake through all those hours of studying.

          

                And eventually you reach a point where you’re just like: (Pardon the cursing in this)

               

                So you reason with yourself that you’ll be fine if you skip that one class or don’t take that one exam. And you end up getting into a funk where you give up and have reached the conclusion that you’re not going to make anything of yourself…and you’re okay with that…but then a friend intervenes and forces you to get your act together.

               

                You create a study group because if you’re going to do this then you aren’t going to do it alone. Besides, you know you’re better at English than that one person, but that one person happens to be better at history, and then there’s that kid that never misses a math problem…and boom, the A-Team of study groups is created.

                

                Then you push through, take your tests, and make it through all those courses required for your major. So you come out like:

            

                And then you blink and you realize time’s gone by faster than you could have ever anticipated and you’ve reached the end of your college career.

                Somewhere between all the pain, tears, late nights, bad quiz grades because you chose to socialize instead of study, and the lost friendships because you chose to study instead of socialize, and the deterioration of your mental state, and all the money you gave to the school in order to go through all your courses, you created a bunch of good memories and came out a changed person with friendships that will last a life time.

                You look in the mirror and you’re like, “Woah, look what I’ve become.” Because you’re no longer that awkward little freshman. You’re not even the same person you were four years prior. You’re not the same person you ever were. You’ve developed into something better; something brighter.

       

        

College is a rollercoaster of a ride, but it’s worth it in the end. When it all comes down to it, and you’re getting ready to graduate, you realize that even though you still don’t have your life completely together you have the means to make it where ever you want to go. Because you’re a confident new creature who knows she doesn’t know as much as she originally thought and is okay with that.