What No One Told Me About Adjusting to College

By Jennie Ellsworth

FOMO is real y’all.

For those of you that do not know, FOMO stands for the fear of missing out. I found that most of the FOMO that I was experiencing came from the constant updates and comparisons I made to my friends on social media.

Last year was when it really hit me hard. I had made a decision to go to college in Missouri. It is not a big name school and has a medium sized population. Coming from a large high school, it was quite an adjustment. Personally, I have always been drawn to places with lots of people because I love getting to meet new people which is why I had desired to go to a large school. However, with scholarships and my major, it led me to southeast Missouri.

Once I moved into college, I found myself getting really sad about the choice I had made and started comparing it to my friends who went to schools like University of Illinois, Kansas University and University of Kentucky. Something that people don’t tell you is that adjusting to college is HARD. I was two hours away from my home and did not know anyone at my school. It was hard, y’all. So of course, I resorted to checking all social media platforms to see how other people were adjusting.

When checking Snapchat stories, I saw people having so much fun and making so many new friends and I felt like I was only having a mediocre time. However in return, I was posting stories that made it look like I was having the time of my life, but in reality, I was just living through the motions of being a freshman in college.

Over time, I started to love my school and get involved more with my sorority and numerous clubs. It helped a lot, but the thing that helped the most was decreasing my time spent on social media. If you haven’t tried it, I strongly suggest it because you can grow so so much. I started thinking, why is it so important to post every single thing that I am doing at school? Do people really care what food I ate today? Are people even seeing my story if they say they just click through them to get rid of the notification?

In reality, it does not matter if other people know what you are doing. What matters is if you are happy with what you are doing. Are you doing something just for other people’s approval? Or are you truly happy with your actions and activities? I found that I was more worried about what other people thought about my stories than what I thought of myself.

Through this challenge, I started to appreciate the little things that my college offered that other schools didn’t. I learned a lot about myself and what truly kept my happiness going. FOMO is real, but it can be overcome.