<p>Two years ago, I started a bachelor's degree in accounting at Boston College. I was one of the very few commuter students on campus, but I thought that I would have an awesome experience nonetheless.</p>
<p>Two years later, college is okay, but wasn't as awesome as I had hoped. At times, it's quite lonely and isolating, largely because I don't have any friends. I chalk it up to the fact that I never lived on campus. During my freshman year, I tried making friends, but no one seemed interested in hanging out with me (maybe because they didn't see me very much and didn't know me very well outside of class). I also didn't want to seem overly clingly, especially as a stranger, so I never pushed myself into other people's lives, and as a result, ended up with very few social connections. The clubs were anemic and met at very late hours, limiting my participation in them. I couldn't make a crack at the service organizations. </p>
<p>I did, however, end up knowing a few faculty members in the school of management more well than actual students themselves, through office hours and other faculty-student functions. But, the social life I dreamed of in high school for college never quite materialized. In fact, I had more of a social life in high school than I do now.</p>
<p>It's my fifth semester, and I am graduating in less than twenty months. I don't know, perhaps I didn't try hard enough as a commuter student to integrate myself into the community better, but I had obligations outside of school which kept me from hanging out there till the wee hours. And even if I was more aggressive in building social relationships with my peers, I don't know if it would have gotten me very far, since I didn't live in a dorm and other people might be turned off such social aggressiveness.</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong - I like my school. The people and staff are generally nice and the education is solid. I feel as if I my parents and I are getting our money's worth in the tuition we pay. But I didn't make any true, lifelong friends. I can't say that I did anything cool or awesome other than bagging groceries on weekday nights or studying while I was there. To me, college was simply another vocation. A checklist of items to sign off. A means to an end, and nothing more.</p>
<p>I guess the point I am trying to make is: What if your college experience was much less than "awesome"? How do some of us reconcile our meager college experiences with the ones that others had? Or do we as a society, put too much of an emphasis on encouraging our children to make sure that they enjoy themselves in college, because everyone else had an "awesome" college experience?</p>
<p>Does anyone else believe that their college experiences, past or present, were negative or mixed? If so, please share.</p>