Opinion | Discovering who you are: college edition

Growing up and figuring out who you are is a lot more complicated than the movies make it out to be. Illustration by WYATT LINCOLN, illustrator

I decided a long time ago that college meant freedom. 

Going to a four-year university had always been an intimate dream of mine. It’s something I would reserve solely for fantasies of midnight car rides to the middle of nowhere with friends and sneaking into parties none of us were invited to — the fantasies where I had the kind of independence to book a therapist and afford my own groceries. 

Serenity Anderson, sophomore television writing and production major

In college, I could finally be myself.

And for the most part, I was right. College is freedom. It’s staying out until 3 a.m. because even though you said you would leave two hours ago and your editing assignment isn’t done yet and you have an 8 a.m. class that day, for some reason you can’t stop belly-laughing with your friends about nothing. 

College is eating out (or eating in and ignoring the world forever and ever…) and rearranging your room three times. It’s smiling at strangers and getting lost in Los Angeles even though you basically grew up there. It’s discovering those parts of yourself you never knew existed in the first place. 

College is where you find yourself — the best years of your life!

The best years.

But college is also feeling lost. And nostalgic and giddy because you’re here. Finally. It’s being adventurous (from the safety of the Pralle fourth floor lounge) and reinventing every aspect of the parts of yourself you can’t stand. 

There’s this unsteadiness of existing that sometimes makes going to class hard and doing homework even harder. Making Nolan-obsessed film friends and pretending to laugh at their Adventure Time references — a show you’ll never in your life watch, rewatch or anything in between — to feel like you’re not outside of everything. 

And everything feels icky. Going to the caf. Sharing a bathroom. Making two-second eye contact with a real, living boy. 

College is pretending like you know who you are. It’s the time to discover yourself!

And as someone who has rediscovered herself five different times (two of which were thanks to poorly timed crushes), I can say with certainty that the idea of finding yourself is kind of bullshit.

The problem with being a perfectionist is that there always needs to be a right answer. The world is black and white and in order to fit the mold, you’ve gotta become one or the other. But living is so much more complicated than black or white, right or wrong. 

Sometimes there’s no answer at all. The truth is, you will never fully find or understand yourself. As people, we are constantly changing — growing, learning, loving — and through all that comes mistakes. Big ones. Mistakes we feel we may never come back from.

It’s when we become fixated on who we are and what the meaning of life is, that we miss the whole point! Finding yourself doesn’t start or end at college. It’s a life-long journey and I say screw you to anyone who told me otherwise. Because how unrealistic and utterly boring it would be to know exactly who you are and where you’re going after just four years?