Looking in the rearview

If you asked me at 17 what I expected from my college experience, I probably would’ve told you it would feel like “Tongue Tied” by Grouplove or “Tonight Tonight” by Hot Chelle Rae. Looking back, it more resembles “Ribs” by Lorde.

‍

I’ve been known to romanticize the past, to look back with rose-colored glasses. As nostalgia leads me through my memories of the last four years, I notice that the moments start passing faster and faster, like trees in a passing train window. Clear, unique, specific at first, then suddenly an indiscernible blur of green.

‍

Semesters run together. Was that sophomore or junior year? Which break was that again? Remember the one time?

‍

Memories swirl, spin and blend together.

‍

Even with my tendency to long for days gone by, my college experience hasn’t been everything I expected, or even wanted it to be. I didn’t join a sorority, I never got an internship, I didn’t join a club sports team, I don’t – and never did – have straight As.

‍

Still, I wouldn’t trade it. I’ve grown in knowledge, confidence and maturity. My memory of my first year self is a strange, blurry apparition who looks like me and sounds like me, but is very clearly not me.

‍

The shift from “high school student” to “college student” is both confidence and anxiety. It’s ignorance and bliss. It’s homesickness and community.

‍

Graduating from college is going from “student” to labelless. The past 18 years, the same label, now gone.

‍

Back in 2019, when a 17-year-old Riley started to look at colleges, the one thing on my mind was getting out of my hometown. Dover, Ohio, population 12,000, is small and rural. I convinced myself that I wanted to be in a city. I wanted New York City, Chicago, even Columbus would do.

‍

I wanted to be the person to “make it out” of my hometown, to be the person who left and didn’t look back. An imagined superiority over my peers in high school told me that I was that person.

‍

I thought I would suffocate in Oxford's cramped eight-square-miles, isolated from what feels like any civilization other than Miami students.

‍

When I fell in love with Miami, I didn’t want to admit I was wrong. I did everything in my power to drag out the process of committing, just in case.

‍

Nick Perez, a senior political science and history major, said he didn’t tell his friends he was going to Miami.

‍

“To me, in high school, that was the end of the world,” Nick said.

‍

Four years later, his feelings have changed.

‍

“I will gladly walk up and tell anyone I went to Miami, and I’d tell them it was probably better than wherever they went,” Nick said. “You can say whatever you want about the books you read, you probably didn’t have as much fun. You probably didn’t meet as many cool people as I did.”

‍

Nick spent four years as a resident assistant, meaning he never got to live off campus.

“I say goodbye and go home and it’s empty and it’s quiet. Some nights that’s exactly what I need, and other times I’m like ‘damn,’” Nick said. “Other people don’t say goodbye and go home, they just stay with their friends. They [just] say goodnight.”

‍

Graduation can feel like a sort of death. The end of what is supposed to be the best four years of your life. To Nick, this feels like everything is going to come crashing down.

‍

“There’s no avoiding it. Graduation is on a certain date, and then after that I’m leaving, you’re leaving, everybody I know is leaving Oxford,” Nick said.

‍

Nick said that his college experience is defined by the people he’s met.

“When I talk about college, I would just talk about the people I met,” Nick said. “I feel like I’ve learned more from them, stuff that’s more present in my life than a geology class I took freshman year.”

‍

I have a list – longer than I care to admit – of regrets and things I wish I could take back.

‍

Warnings from those older and more experienced than me fell on deaf ears. There are certain things that can only be learned by experience.

At seven years old, when my mom’s call to tie my shoes before I went outside went ignored, the sting of my scraped hands and the burn of peroxide over a busted knee might convince me to be more careful next time.

‍

Lindey Helwagen, senior political science and environmental science student, switched out of the Farmer School of Business to the College of Arts and Sciences midway through her time at Miami.

‍

“A school that cares this much about business is not a place I should have been,” Lindey said. “This should have never been on the list.”

‍

Despite this, Lindey said her time at Miami has helped teach her “the ability to say no, and say ‘this isn’t for me.’”

‍

“I was so naive,” Lindey said. “I thought I was going to get A’s in all my classes and it was going to be so easy and I was going to make a million friends and be in every club and everyone’s going to love me and it’s going to be peace on Earth every day.”

‍

In retrospect, Lindey said her college experience can be defined as ‘messy.’

“Not messy in a fun way. Like, messy in a way where I’m looking around like ‘I don’t know how I’m going to fix this,” Lindey said. “It was a case of me just continuing to try and try and try to figure it out.”

‍

The question of “if I knew then” is nearly impossible to answer. If I could tell myself at 18 what I know now at almost 22, my life would look completely different.

‍

If I knew at 18 that mom can read people better than I can, I probably would have saved myself a lot of turmoil.

‍

If I knew at 19 that actually no, not everyone thinks like that, I probably would have been diagnosed and medicated for Bipolar disorder much sooner.

‍

If I knew at 20 that anger isn’t a sustainable emotion, I probably wouldn’t have a permanent crease between my eyebrows now.

‍

I wish I would’ve taken school more seriously. I wish I would’ve been more involved. I wish I would’ve changed my major earlier. I wish I would’ve participated more.

‍

Emma Guinee, a senior marketing major, is also struggling with the finality that comes with graduating.

‍

“It’s easy to get wrapped up in saying ‘I’m graduating, so I’m leaving all of my friends and now I have zero,” Emma said. “No, you’re just making more friends in a different spot.”

‍

While graduating from college may feel like a permanent marker into adulthood, Emma knows it isn’t that simple.

‍

“I think ‘finding who you are’ is so generous for being 22,” Emma said. “I feel like it's so easy to be like, ‘you’re going to find out who you are and who you want to be,’ but that is ever changing and ever evolving.”

‍

Instead, the last four years have taught her the importance of recognizing personal growth in all its forms.

‍

“I’m more aware of how I perceive myself now,” Emma said. “Freshman year, I was a starving 18-year-old who got pissed off at people every other minute and took everything too personally.”

‍

Not only is our generation prone to hyper-self-observation through social media, we’re more aware of the world around us and how we fit into it than past generations.

“I mean, a big thing for Gen Z is that we were born into the repercussions of 9/11, the housing crisis, recession, and then pandemic, and then a polarizing election year, a genocide, and a polarizing election year again. And the inflation, the cost of living is unbelievably high,” Emma said. “Minimum wage is not. People make three times the minimum wage and it's not enough to live. In every stage of our lives, there’s something. There's never been a moment of peace.”

‍

I’ve never figured out how not to wear my heart on my sleeve. Over exposed and under protected, it cuts and rips and bleeds at every brush. Every emotion I have felt has been deep, whole and consuming.

‍

This used to be an embarrassing weakness. I used to pull at my sleeves to cover it, build walls around myself to shield it, and sequester myself to protect  it. I wanted to remove it, to be cool and aloof.

‍

I tried to fit myself into the ideal mold, which ended up as an effort to create a new person in the name of “finding myself.” I have changed in every direction, warped into every form, and tried on different personalities and styles.

‍

Now, I feel like sediment settling in a river bed, finally calm, even, stable. Change has been a central and recurring motif to my college experience.