Ava Gravina ’28 is a psychology and English major at William and Mary. She swims with Club Swim and writes for the school’s pop culture magazine, The DoG Street Journal. She is from outside Boston and enjoys spending time with friends, baking, reading psychological thrillers and watching rom-coms. You can contact her at acgravina@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
August. Back-to-school season. Shopping. Anticipation. Emails. Stress. Move-in. Goodbyes. College. Whether you are an underclassman or an upperclassman, back-to-school season is mostly the same. Yet, there is one stark difference: one is just beginning, while the other is creeping toward the end. For both, one question can become all-consuming: Did I make the most of my college experience?
Here at the College of William and Mary, we are constantly reminded that those who come here belong here, and I am certainly not here to dispute this. It feels good, in fact, reassuring, to be told as a freshman that you belong. Yet, if there is one phrase I have heard repeatedly, from my dad especially, it is, “college is what you make of it.” At first, I simply understood this as a challenge to be involved, put yourself out there and grow as an individual. But I think this notion challenges the idea that you have to have “the” college experience. What if there is not one?
Maybe the college experience has become something students feel like they are supposed to secure: finding their people quickly, joining countless clubs, studying abroad, staying busy, landing internships and somehow maintaining a perfectly balanced social and academic life. Instead of seeing college as something they are supposed to experience and live through, students can begin to see it as something they have to achieve. And if college is something we have to achieve, then it is easy to wonder who is doing it better than you.
There is no true measurement, though, for whether someone is “doing college” better. In a world that prides itself on quantifying success, this can be difficult to understand.
It can be empowering to hear, “college is what you make of it,” but what happens if you feel like you are not making the most of it? You may not have a big friend group, you may not know what you want to major in, you may not get the internship or classes you wanted and you may even spend a Friday night alone in your room. It becomes easy to look around at everyone else, questioning whether you are doing college wrong and whether what you are doing is enough. Freshmen may look at upperclassmen and assume they have everything figured out; meanwhile, upperclassmen look back and wonder if they did enough with the time they had.
And this is where the idea of “making the most of college” becomes complicated. Is “the most” synonymous with “more?” We have already made “better” synonymous with “more.” Just because an experience is meaningful to someone does not mean it has to be meaningful to someone else. That is what having your own college experience means: There is no one college experience.
At the College, you can be an English major, a chemistry major or both. You can conduct research, write for a school publication, play a sport, join student organizations, focus on academics and do a mix of the above. You may have a huge group of friends, or you may have a few close friends. And none of these experiences is more “William and Mary” than another. If there is no single way to be a William and Mary student, there cannot be one way to experience William and Mary.
Maybe “college is what you make of it” is permission to choose what matters to you, even if it does not look like what matters to someone else.
August. Back-to-school season. Shopping. Anticipation. Emails. Stress. Move-in. Goodbyes. College. Freshmen are arriving, upperclassmen are returning and everyone has their own expectations for the year. Maybe before asking whether we are making the most of college, we should ask what “the most” is supposed to mean.
