<p>I'm currently a senior in high school and have been looking to college as sort of a "light at the end of the tunnel."</p>
<p>But I'm worried that having such high expectations of college (as in being surrounded by amazing people & having an endless amount of academic and social opportunities) might only lead me to disappointment.</p>
<p>Has anyone experienced this kind of buzzkill?</p>
<p>First year didn’t disappoint me at all… and I commuted! After I got comfortable going to University, 2nd semester of first year was a blast. If you live on campus, you should have a lot of fun. </p>
<p>The thing that you have to realize, though, is that how your first year goes is entirely up to you. You can have a really good or a really bad first year depending on the choices that you make.</p>
<p>But the enthusiasm/novelty started to really wear off in second year, and was completely gone by 3rd. By third year everything was just boring and routine. Now I’m going into 4th and it will probably still go downhill. I’m looking forward to graduating and moving. There just aren’t too many new experiences in Uni anymore.</p>
<p>College is better than high school, definitely – more exciting, more opportunities, all that. Orientation will help calm your fears a lot. Everyone will be nervous, but you’ll get to know each other, and by the time school starts it won’t seem so daunting.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, though: there will be some not-so-“amazing” people anywhere you go, regardless of how high the average SAT score is. Book smarts don’t always transfer to “life” smarts. Remember that you’re just a year out of high school and many of your peers will still be in the “high school” mindset. Gossip, immaturity, all that stuff you hated in high school … it’ll still be present to some extent. It gets better about halfway through the year once everyone has gotten used to being away from home and the novelty wears off. Get involved with activities that involve upperclassmen; most of them don’t care as much about gossip, ridiculous drunken escapes, etc. as freshmen do.</p>
<p>the beginning was not as amazing as i expected it to be. i just had unreal expectations.. i expected parties to be going on everywhere and to make a close group of 15 friends like i had in hs right away. realtionships dont work like that in college. you may have people that you are close to but they will most likely not all be best friends. its different but cool that way, can hang out with different people all the time and always have something to do. i look forward to becoming closer with my friends now and making tons of new aquaintences of over the next year. only 1/4 done.. made some mistakes first semester and got a little disappointed but still had fun.</p>
<p>second semester was a whole lot better. i got perspective and figured out that i can CHOOSE who to be friends with and now im 100% happy and expect college to just keep on getting better and better. so i was dissappointed ad prob will be many more times, deal and things will work out.</p>