A year ago, I was just starting my last midterms in high school, a bit nervous about prom which was soon enough, and not afraid at all of getting the hell out of this ugly place they call school.
A year later, I’m stuck in a major that I don’t quite like, I regret wanting to leave school and I always ask myself, “Why was I so eager to leave this place I got so attached to?”
When I was a senior in high school, all of my hopes and dreams were centered around leaving and going into the ‘real world’. This scary term of the place where you have to be fully independent. I had so many bright expectations of how university would look like, how it will be full of passionate students and how we might change the world. I thought people would be so eager to learn. I thought that life would be so much different, that university wouldn’t burden us with an ongoing stress like school did.
Sadly, university is worse. You’re forced to get out of your comfort zone in a negative sense where you have to do presentations on topics you couldn’t care less about; you have to hand in assignments only for the sake of having an assignment grade on the system; the fear of failure and your being collided to the extent that you are fear, and you are failure.
Growing up, you’re always projected to how you’re studying what you’re passionate about in university, you have multicultural friends, you’re finally pleased with where you are and what you’re doing. But they don’t let you about the uncertainty. They don’t tell you about the overwhelming anxiety of going to university every single morning. They don’t tell you what to do if you haven’t fully found your passion or, if its not a ‘suitable’ job, or college.
Based on experience, I was always told to enjoy school because its better than university, but I never quite believed those who told me so. I always thought: “What is enjoyable about uniforms or classes?” And I was so wrong about that. School meant inside jokes, life-long friends, precious teachers. School is learning, dedication, understanding. My memories with my school are so deep rooted inside my mind to the extent that I miss it, and I never thought I’d miss a thing about this place.
On a positive note, maybe I’ll like university as the years go on, maybe it’ll be just as amazing as school was, maybe the coming years will be better, maybe I’ll look at the half of the cup that’s full one day, and maybe you should, too.
