College

Today I am thinking about college. Specifically, my college experience. It has definitely been unique.

In general, the word "college" makes me think of both ultra-intelligent, preppy people you'd find studying in a library in a big group- the kind of people universities like to put on brochures- and also the more social, sometimes slightly more unkempt people who spend more time drinking and partying than devoting time to class and studying. I have been to two universities in my college career and the first was full of the first people I described, while the second has many more of the second group. I transferred after one year for several reasons, the main one being that I thought I would fit in better, from the University of Illinois to Western Illinois University.

Now, the unfortunate thing is that I have discovered through all of this that I am really more of that first group. At least, I come to college to learn and get a degree rather than party all the time. I don't know so much about the ultra-intelligent part. I am not an extremely outgoing person and I have a hard time starting up a conversation with people I don't know. I don't like to go to big parties and drink all night. I don't have a problem with alcohol, but I don't see the point in drinking just to get drunk. It is expensive and you are sure to feel horrible the next day. These viewpoints make me a pretty big minority here at Western. They also make it pretty hard for me to find friends with similar interests. Though my roommates are not as extreme as the Western stereotype I painted above, they do have much more in common with each other than with me and have become best friends during this semester. They both are much more social than I and have many mutual friends that they hang out with all the time. This makes me often the third wheel. If I am invited to come along wherever they are going, I'm still left to my own devices once we get there, which basically means I stand alone awkwardly, since I don't know anyone. They also don't understand that I don't enjoy all the same things that they do, and therefore I am often just left out or ignored.

I realize this makes me sound pretty pathetic. I do have friends, but the majority of them don't go here. It just makes me wonder if I made the right decision back in the first semester of my freshman year. I honestly didn't give U of I much of a chance. I had applied to transfer by Christmas. Maybe I should have listened to Kelly, my first friend at U of I, one my best friends now, and my would-have-been roommate for sophomore year, when she told me to stay. I'm not saying I regret the decision to transfer, but I am not positive I did the right thing either. There are benefits to being at Western. I am much closer to both home and Colin and since the school is much smaller, I have gotten to know both professors and students in my major. But the part that bothers me is that I transferred to fit in better and ended up realizing I fit better at U of I. How ironic.