I was lucky to find my closest college friends on the same floor of the dorm that we all shared our freshman year. Over the past four years, we’ve all taken different paths as we’ve worked our way to our degrees, even those of us who have the same major.
I’m lucky enough to be pretty happy with the entirety of my college experience. I can confidently say that when I graduate in May, I’ll have learned enough to get a good job, met some pretty awesome friends and made enough of those kinds of memories that I will never tell my children, or probably even the person I’m going to marry.
It’s interesting, though, to talk to my friends who are less than thrilled about the past four years of their lives. It’s not that they haven’t enjoyed college, its just that it didn’t really live up to their expectation that it would be unforgettable.
Trust me when I say that if you’re college experience is in any way just “meh,” you are doing it completely wrong. Scratch that… you’re fucking it up. If you’re doing any of the following things on this list, time to stop and think about making some changes. Trust me, there is still time to turn things around.
You sleep in until noon on weekdays and go straight home after class
You should never just have to go to class. In my time at college, I’ve joined a fraternity, worked as an RA (which was not a bad gig), worked customer service at the campus rec center, interned at a marketing firm and got paid to be a T.A. I probably did more than you’re typical college student (although I know plenty of people who did even more), but the benefits of being involved and active on campus vastly outweigh the cons.
Besides showing the world that you’re not a slob, having places to be and people to please in college has the potential to introduce you to some pretty fun people who you’ll befriend. And yes, you’ll get some good professional experience so that maybe you can land a job. For the involved bro, there will be days where you’ll be stressed out and feel like you’ll never have enough time to get things done. But the hard work will pay off.
You can’t pass your classes
I pointed out a few weeks ago that grades really don’t matter unless they’re perfect or in the toilet, and I stand by that. The important thing to remember, though, is that you kind of still need to actually go to class and do the work. I’ve had friends who failed classes and had to pay for them all over again, which pissed off their parents in addition delaying their graduation. I’ve had other friends who failed so many classes in their chosen major that they had to switch completely in order to graduate on time.
If you have to switch your major to a much easier program in order to do the one thing that you’re actually there to do—which is graduate—that can’t bode well for your future. I’m not saying that switching your major if you decide your current major isn’t for you is a cop out, but to do so because the other one interfered with your Breaking Bad marathon sure as hell is. College is a challenge, that’s not in dispute. But what does it say about you that you couldn’t see it through to the end?
You’ve made no real friends who are girls
Shifting gears here, this was a point that I almost forgot to consider because of course even the most hardcore douchebags have friends who are girls, right? Not so fast. There are many bros out there who have no real friendships with girls. In other words, girls who are more than just a potential hookup. Ask yourself, is there at least one woman in your life, other than your mother or sister, who you can actually chill with? Like, watch a movie together and not think about fucking? If not, you’re shutting out some potentially great friendships with more than half of your campus, unless you go to one of those weird engineering schools in the middle of nowhere.
Besides being able to show people that you’re not a Neanderthal, think about the ability to seek advice from your lady-bro when you’ve got a problem that your bro-bros may not get. And don’t worry about this kind of friendship making a potential girlfriend jealous. If she’s worth dating she’ll appreciate that you can be friends with women, because it shows that you respect them.
You cycle through friends every semester
In college you meet a ton of people, and some of them will naturally be more or less important to you over time. I generally find that I get buddy-buddy with people who I have the same classes with during the semester, only for us to go our separate ways once those classes end. That’s just how some friendships are: completely dependent on the circumstances that brought you together. At the end of the day I still have my bros who I live with, those bros who were there since day one.
If you find, however, that the person you’re calling your best friend this semester is not the same one you said that about last semester, ask yourself why you can’t hold on to friends. Do you enter a group of people only to bow out a few months later because you found some other really cool people to kick it with? If so, that really doesn’t say much about your ability to form meaningful relationships, does it?
Tucker Bradford is a regular columnist for BroBible.
[Photo: Ljupco Smokovski/Shutterstock]