Opinion | Five Things I Didn’t Expect About College

From bathroom breaks to preachers, campus life has a lot of surprises. Here are the top five:

1. You don’t have to ask to go to the bathroom

For years and years from elementary to middle to high school, I was required to ask to go to the bathroom and, if I didn’t, there were consequences. Even at my job, I have to ask. However, then I get to college where most of my classes are in huge lecture halls and wondering if I have to ask to use the bathroom turns into a much higher anxiety inducing moment than it should be. I don’t want to be called out in front of a 100 people for having to use the bathroom and then on the other hand I don’t want to go in my pants.

2. The Number Of Religious Preachers On Campus

When I first came to UW-Milwaukee, I didn’t know there would be poster boards of bloody fetuses in Spaights Plaza every once in a while. I didn’t know Christian extremists would have a megaphone bellowing about lust is a sin.  I knew college was a melting pot of views, but I never knew such an extreme view on the Bible etc. would be one of them. My freshman self was kind of hurt when being told I was going to go to hell multiple times in such a dramatic fashion.

3. How Hard It Is To Make Friends

For my freshman year, I was tackling my Gen Eds, which means most of the time I’m in lecture halls not talking to anyone around me since I sit by different people every week. Then finally later in my college career the classes are smaller and a chance for possible friendship seems easier. You might say, “Oh Shannon, what about the dorms?” I would respond by saying, I don’t have the kind of money to stay at the dorms so I opted for staying at home and having a 45-minute commute.  You also might say, “Shannon, why didn’t you join clubs?” to which I would respond that eventually I did, but going to college and having a part-time job takes up a good chunk of my time.

4. Most of the classes you initially take have nothing to do with your major.

No one told me that the first two years of college was basically the last two years of high school. No, I didn’t want to take two extra math classes for my JAMS (Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) degree. I need how many natural science credits?!? No, I don’t want to learn a foreign language. I had to take three semesters of Italian and currently I can barely say bonjour. Here’s me being incredibly concerned my first year of college that I picked the right major, and it really ends up not mattering if I did for my first two years. I really didn’t get to take most of my major’s classes until my junior year.

5. There might be people over the age of 40 in some of your classes.

This is something I did not expect because mostly in movies it’s all 19-year-old frat boys and sorority girls. When I walked into my first class freshmen year and there were two ladies over the age of 60 in my class, needless to say I was pretty surprised.