Four years ago, I was a senior at a tiny arts high school with a graduating class of about 80. I had no idea what was coming for me.
I had always envisioned myself going to one of the niche, indie colleges akin to my own high school that my fellow students aimed for. But as financial pressures began to come into play, I had to grapple with the idea that maybe I wasn't cut out for the greatness I had imagined. Three applications later, I accepted my fate of attending ASU.
My single "Welcome Week" activity was an insane culture shock that isolated me from the tight-knit, wildly toxic environment where I was raised. The line leading into the Sun Devil Fitness Complex was filled with other girls who were bleach blonde, sun-kissed and decked head to toe in Lululemon — all walking threats to my inflated arts school ego. With the belief that I was worthy of something much better, I left the line and went to bed early.
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For the remainder of that year, I didn't talk to anyone. If I'm being honest, I refused to talk to anyone. I stayed in my tiny corner of the world, following a rigid pattern of drinking a coffee, going to class, returning to my dorm, microwaving my flavorless P.O.D. Market meal, and falling asleep by midnight.
I spent the majority of my freshman year walking and thinking. I would watch groups of students sitting on the grass laughing as I wandered past the Memorial Union lawn. They looked like an advertisement on a pamphlet for University life.
Watching them brought me back to the day I moved into college for the first time. My mom had given me a picnic blanket and told me I could use it to have picnics with new friends. I folded it carefully on my shelf amongst my bedsheets and blankets.
But time had passed and I was still not a picture of success. The blanket continued to sit on my shelf, untouched.
I spent my sophomore year pretty lonely, and by junior year, I was obsessed with the idea of leaving. A picturesque version began to form in my mind of a sophisticated woman in her early 20s taking the world by storm. She had her life together, and she was definitely not in college. That woman looked a lot like me.
In between these moments when I wanted to escape so badly, my brain was simultaneously going through one of the biggest transformations of my early adult life. One way or another, I came to terms with the idea that there might be more to life than what I was limiting myself to.
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Maybe it started with the day I went to ASU's Album Listening Club and met other people who shared my love of music. It might also have something to do with accepting the fact that judgment only limits me. Maybe it's just a part of growing up, but this change is eternally happening.
I've got about six months left of the "college experience," and, to my surprise, college isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The longer I gave being a college student a shot, the more my community slowly began to form around me, sometimes without me even noticing it.
When I walk past the Memorial Union lawn and see a mess of happy students sitting on their picnic blankets, I feel happy for them. I feel okay as long as I accept that I've been the girl on the lawn, but I've also been watching on the sidelines.
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This is not an advertisement for giving college a chance. In a decade or so when I'm ancient and withered, I doubt I'm going to feel nostalgic for my college days. I'll probably remember it the black-and-white way that the brain usually works: as a jumble of bad memories that block out the good ones.
Hopefully, by then, I'll look the way I would hope: as an eternal cool girl who didn't fall off the face of the earth when she turned 22. She'll continue to have lows because nothing is ever consistent. But the highs will keep coming because nothing ends after college.
In fact, life might just be beginning.
Edited by Andrew Dirst, Abigail Beck and Natalia Jarrett.
Reach the reporter at ebmosier@asu.edu and follow @eleribmosier on X.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on X.
Eleri is a senior studying interdisciplinary studies, english and sociology. This is her second semester with The State Press. She has also worked in retail.
