#SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS TV#

So if you feel clueless, just know you’re not alone. In reality, everyone in college is a baby adult. No one knows what they’re doing.įlashback again to early 2000s movies in which the protagonist is this woefully naive summer child and all their peers are these incredibly mature, street-savvy adults in comparison. However, as an English major myself, I can say that male English majors are kind of the unicorns of SU. For example, I know a guy who’s a physics and theater double major. There are a lot more biology, kinesiology, and premed students at SU than I was expecting! Since Southwestern is a liberal-arts school, I was expecting there to be mostly humanities majors, but there’s a really diverse range of students across all the majors and even more with interesting double major or major–minor combos. It’s kind of cool how you can have a class with someone, then see them again two semesters later, and they’ll tell you about how they got their first apartment or landed a fun internship over the summer. You inevitably end up bonding with at least some of the people you see over and over again, and you get to see their education, careers, and lives change and take off over the course of college. So it was actually a pleasantly surprising, familiar experience, just with a new group of people. This was something I was really used to in high school (heck, I even went to kindergarten with some people I walked across the stage with!) but not something I was necessarily expecting to happen in college.

This was probably to be expected given that SU is so small, but I’ve had the same people in multiple different classes. Because there’s a lot more variety and choice when it comes to classes, you might have a group of friends you’ve bonded with in your theater classes for your minor, another group you’re friends with because you worked with them on a physics project, and another you met through your roommate. Media gives the impression that early 2000s high-school social groups translate into college, but (shockingly) that’s not the case.

People tend to be more social chameleons in college. But hey, we’re all kind of adults now! You can sit with us. It’s always fun going from scandalized fresh-out-of-high-school shock to watching other first-years have that same reaction. In college, you’re encouraged to think outside the box and venture out into uncharted intellectual waters, so long as you can explain your thinking. This may pertain to mostly high-school English versus college English, but in high school, my English teachers would usually be fishing for an answer or a really canonical interpretation. If you can back up a statement, you can get away with saying it. Syllabus day is pretty boring and procedural but extremely important. Basically, it’s a hefty document you’ll receive on the very first day of class that lists every single assignment, project, and exam that you will have during the semester.

If you’re surprised by the idea of syllabus day, you may also be like I was and not have a clue what a syllabus is. You will spend the first day of every single class going over course expectations and structure, materials requirements, and grading and attendance policies, and you’re probably going to finish the day wondering if you should just start carrying around a recording of you declaring your year and major because that’s always the icebreaker Every. You know how in movies, the protagonist walks into their first day of class and the professor tells everyone, “We’re going to discuss the first three chapters of the textbook, which I expect you to have read already because we’re having a quiz the very next class”? Not the case at all.

#SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS TV#

Since I’m the first person in my family to attend a traditional four-year university straight out of high school, most of what I thought I knew about college came from TV and movies, which, I would learn very quickly, were much further from reality than I thought-in a good way, though! So for those of you who are anything like I was, allow me to impart some of my spiciest surprises and subverted expectations. Now that I’m approaching the end of college, I find myself reflecting on my experience, and particularly my first year, which feels like it was both yesterday and a million years ago. Now that I’m a senior (and graduating in four months-yikes), I’ve had a lot of time to get familiar with all the ins and outs of college life and settle into a pretty comfortable routine.

Subvert expectations