College Life, College Strife: Debunking College Sterotypes

For anyone who is currently in college or who has ever been in college, you know that it is simultaneously the best and worst place to be.

There's ups and downs to everything in life, but college amplifies this beyond measure. So naturally, I took it upon myself to try and measure it. Unfortunately due to the global health pandemic that has thrown the country into World War Z...or World War C (for Coronavirus and also because C is the third letter of the alphabet and we've already had two world wars ok, yeah. I digress) I was promptly kicked out of my college dorm.

The Email

When I first realized we were being kicked off of campus my first emotion was…panic. Around 5 pm on Monday afternoon our president announced that classes were cancelled and the residence halls would be closed by Tuesday at 5.

I called my parents because I live a thousand miles away and wasn't sure how I'd get home in time. They calmed me down and then I saw my teammates and began to panic again, this time simply for fun. I had to pack up most of my room and figure out how I was going to get from Connecticut to Georgia in less than 24 hours.

Not to mention I was upset at the notion of missing my flight from JFK to Ft. Lauderdale that was scheduled for Saturday night with my best friend. Spring Break was the one thing that was pulling me through the semester…or maybe I should say dragging.

I watched my teammates cry and worry about getting home and then made it home myself. Not sure what to do with myself and all the work I had to do this week, I took it upon myself to sleep. After plenty of thinking and sleeping and eating, I finally came up with a solution: The Internet!

My Social Media Savior

Now, I am by no means famous of popular in real life, let alone... on the internet. I have less than a thousand followers on probably every social media platform combined. In fact, the term influencer makes me feel like we’re living in a ~dystopian~ novel. Nonetheless, my absence on campus made it incredibly hard to go around campus and interview my peers. Thus, I took to Instagram and hoped for the best.

Though I’m nowhere near close to being famous, I fortunately have the benefit of being a young adult with internet access and a social media account. I began posting polls. Now I would traditionally make my Instagram stories look a little more artsy, but due to the time crunch I decided to simply use an ombre background, some Instagram generated poll stickers, and my amazing marketing skills to funnel as many people as I could to my Instagram page.

Questions Nobody Asks

I took to the internet streets to ask a few questions that I would fit into the category of "college comfort". You might be wondering what that means. That makes sense given that it's a concept that I literally just made up as I was typing this. Basically, it is anything that is too uncomfortable to ask a regular adult (any person who has graduated college or works in the real world), but also safe enough that college students who care about very little are willing to still answer.

Here was my list:

1. How many packs of ramen do you eat a week? 2. When is the last time you cried and why? 3. Do you know where the library is? 4. Have you ever fallen asleep in the library? 5. Do you have any dining dollars left? 6. Rate your dining hall food 7. Do you wish you went to school somewhere else? 8. What's the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you at school?

Now I’ll admit, it’s not the survey I initially wanted to take but health pandemics often require a change in plans. Although I wish I were invincible, sadly I am not. Here are some of the answers I got from about 80-90 college students, all of whom follow me on Instagram.

Here are my key takeaways from my survey:

1. College students DO NOT like ramen

I’m not really sure where this stereotype came from. I personally think ramen is way too high in sodium and genuinely makes me worry about my cholesterol. Most of the students I interviewed said that they don’t eat ramen on a weekly basis. Some even went as far as to describe how disgusting it was to me. Case in point, ramen does not make for good care packages

2. People know where the library is

For some reason I assumed that there would be some freshman somewhere that just didn’t know where the library was? I don’t know why I thought that but I was proven wrong. Everyone and their mother knows where the library is. In all fairness they tend to be pretty big and hard to miss. So, if you don’t know where your library is then go find it. You probably need it.

3. We are a sad demographic

Most people had cried within the last week. Some reasons were valid, some people are just sad? I mean props to you guys for pushing through. When that seasonal depression hits and you realize it's March so maybe you just have regular depression…that can be a lot. Good for you for still going to class. I am proud of you, I really am. Also, make sure you are drinking water. Crying is very good, very therapeutic, but very draining! Drink plenty of water so you don’t get dehydrated trying to heal!

4. Eat, Sleep, Balance?

The average college student seems to be lacking these three things? I got a lot of stories about people falling asleep in class or falling, not down but…up stairs. I’m still not completely sure how that physically can happen but I got a 3 on my AP Physics exam in high school so I’m not really a valid source for scientific information but maybe campuses should ban stairs? I dunno, just thinking of the greater good. Also I am so sorry you guys are hungry, I would offer you dining dollars, but I too am lacking in that department. Maybe we’ll all have to start eating more ramen. I hear it’s cheap or something.

5. Some people want to stay some want to go

Granted, I didn’t really dig as much as I probably should have to get a quality answer to this question, but it was almost split on whether or not people would stay or leave their college. There are plenty of factors that keep people at certain schools that I didn’t ask about. Everything from scholarships to friends to credit transfers. At the end of the day, I didn’t do a whole lot of research but for a pretty basic question I would say it really just depends on if people love their school or not. If that’s your criteria for staying and you want to stay at your school, best of luck to you, keep doing what you’re doing. If that’s your criteria and you don’t want to stay, also best of luck to you. My best recommendation is to use humor as a coping mechanism and keep it rockin.