What's so great about college?

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I always hear about people saying that college is the best time of your life, but I've been at a university for a few weeks now and I don't get the hype. Maybe I just need to let more time pass, but I can't see anything changing in the forseeable future. Why do people say college is so wonderful? The only differences I see from high school is that you live on campus and it's way harder to make friends.

Not much on my end, I'll most likely look back on that period as the worst and most testing experience of my life but what I gained on a very deeply demanding level forced me to pursue a path of blossoming and the resonating impact will hopefully continue serving me well, not the usual trajectory and reaction to that period of life but it certainly shook me up and forced me to enter a deep reflection and refraction from how I had been existing as a young fellow. Sometimes I'd have really loved a simpler normal slice of life but that was never going to occur with everything I had going on before and around that period of life.

Does anyone else have any answers to this? I'm really puzzled by the "college is so great" stuff I always hear and want to know what it is people do to make it like that. It's a definite step down from high school for me.

It depends on your experience. Do you live in a dorm, off campus, or at home? Are you into academics, or just there because everyone else is? Do you have a major and a department home yet, or are you in the back row in big lecture halls? Joined any clubs? Gotten a campus job? Is it a small college or big university, rural or urban? All these things can affect your experience.

Depends on you experience. Your experience of it being kind of so-so and mediocre is actually not uncommon.

I felt at times quite lonely and out of sorts at my college. Given my nature as an aspie, I would tend to thrive in sort of special itnerest academic clubs. But at my school, there really wasn't much of that, and people who were really "smart" ( in the sense of enjoying learning,reading etc.) was quite small.

Ironically, the most kind and accepting group at my (Catholic) school was the Catholic youth group. Sure they were a bit right leaning on stuff but they all were very kind and laid back.

Keep focused on your studies, find ways to budget your time, and stay the heck away from the internet. Even video games are better.I often whiled my lonely times away by looking at internet porn. It sucked!.

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Here what I think about all this. The pros of college are that
You get financial and career benefits
You can explore your interests
You can have fun and make friends
You can self-improve
The cons, I guess are
Costs and potential debt
The financial benefits of college may be overstated
College might not make you smarter=)
The main thing is that you decide what you get from your college years.

Because it's one of the few times in life you're surrounded by other people your age so it's easier to build social connections.

Also, since most college students are young adults, it becomes a time of great experimentation regarding drinking alcohol, going to parties, and having one night stands with the opposite sex.

Then again, these things do happen in high school, but the different is it's legal and you're all adults now and all on your path to discovering yourselves and becoming more mature ('coming of age') rather than just a bunch of young awkward teens having no idea what the heck they're doing.

That is, assuming you're an N.T. and/or are capable of or have a decent social life.

Make friends while you can in the initial orientation stages, before people find their group of friends and become too closed off to meeting anyone new.

Anyway, you're very lucky at least you can actually LIVE on American college campuses.

In most universities in Australia, there is no campus dorms and 'campus' consists entirely of a few university buildings, some open, well-designed public spaces for study, and the parking lot.

The local uni here is one big university building, the parking lot, open fields and study spaces, and it's in very close proximity to the local library, so I assume students will spill over into the library when they need quiet spaces to study.

Across the street is the local museum, along with a few other open public spaces and bike racks.

I'm not attending yet, but it looks like a pretty neat place. I rarely see students there though except I saw two different little study groups sitting on the grass at two different times.

Yeah, like I know how to do that. Can NTs just decide on a certain day, "Okay, I'm going to go make some friends today" and go do it? Is it really that easy for them?

I did make one friend, but it wasn't in the usual way. My mom talked to the Access Services guy and told him that I was looking for a friend, and the guy brought in someone else with Asperger's whom I'm now friends with. I don't have much hope of making a friend the "usual" way. Whatever that is.

University has been the most disappointing experience of my life so far. I went into it thinking I'd be surrounded by like-minded people, would make a bunch of friends and find a girlfriend too. Instead, I'm completely friendless and isolated. So yeah, fun.

Australian universities are apparently a fair bit different to American colleges, and also I'm a hideous freak, so maybe your experience will be different.

If University is the best part of my life, then holy hell am I in for a treat.

It's different for different people. In my earlier years of college, I enjoyed being able to choose what subjects I studied, found them interesting, and enjoyed the concentration of people who shared many of my interests.

Most people like parties. However, I don't find parties to be fun at all. My guess is that a lot of people like college because it's like one big party to them. A person with average social skills would consider college the best time of their life because they party a lot, get drunk, have sex with young strangers, and their only real responsibility is to study and pass their classes. I think people try to spin college as a time to "meet like-minded people" because that sounds better than saying "have copious amounts of sex with hot young college students and let loose." I've actually come across quite a few people who say college was not what they had expected. I really think it depends on how much you like to party and how stressful your major is. My advice is to plan on what you want to do AFTER college and try to prepare yourself for that career while in college.

Honestly, I loved college, but only after the first two years. What changed wasn't the college, but me. If you want college to be a great experience, you have to make it one yourself.

I went to a huge state university that happened to be in my home town. For my freshman year I didn't take advantage of the opportunity to meet other students because I was socializing with people I knew back in high school, which worked fine at first, but became more and more of a problem as time went on and those people started moving away or getting lives of their own. The first semester I was on top of my schoolwork and was a straight A student, which was really rewarding. The second semester things fell apart academically because I fell behind. And I hated my roommates in the dorms.
My second year was awful because my friends had moved away, I knew very few people on campus, and I was living alone in an overpriced apartment, which led to me getting increasingly socially isolated. This is something I think students who are on the spectrum need to look out for and avoid doing. I think we can too easily withdraw and feel fine doing so, even as the isolation takes a toll on our mental health, happiness, and wellbeing. That second year was miserable even though I can't actually point to any bad experiences. It was all because I wasn't living my life that year. Take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves.
After that second year I knew something needed to change, so I decided to go to a language school in France - this was halfway between being a cheaper version of studying abroad and taking a year off. This experience really turned everything around for me because I met tons of new people from around the world (but mostly from other parts of Europe). Admittedly, for the first month I was there I was rather withdrawn, but then I quickly met tons of new people, started getting wasted regularly, and made deep, lifelong friends. This was so enjoyable and changed my outlook so entirely that when I got back to the States I knew what I needed to do: join every extracurricular that interested me to meet as many new people as I could. This is a key point: you NEED to join extracurriculars. That's how you meet people with similar interests, and that's how you get invited to parties. My junior year I was actually back living with my parents for a year to save money, but I had a ridiculous amount of fun with the people I met in those extracurriculars. It was awkward at first getting to know them, but after a few weeks of showing up to the meetings I got to know a lot of the members really well, started going to parties and later clubs with them, and even traveled around the continent with them. I also wound up living with five people I met my senior year, which is still possibly the best living set up I ever had, living in a house with 5 friends, but each having our own room.
By senior year I'd moved up to more senior positions in some of the organizations I joined, which looks great on a resume and probably helped me get into the Peace Corps and grad school.

So, what I recommend doing is join every extracurricular that even mildly interests you. Go to their meetings and keep going for at least a month. You'll figure out which organizations you really like, and which you aren't as interested in, and then you can drop some things, but I recommend staying in at least 3 organizations. When you feel the urge not to go to a meeting, think "do I have anything better to do?" Chances are, you don't. So just go. And keep talking to people, even if it's awkward. After a little time, you will click with some of them. And you will go to parties with them, and travel with them, and you'll have a social life. It's also a way to explore your interests much more meaningfully - even if we're socially awkward and introverted, we're still social creatures like everyone else, and having other people to explore your interests with is a much more meaningful activity than doing it solo.

Like people have already said, this is a chance for exploration, of your interests and of other people. Take advantage of it, get out of yourself and challenge your comfort zone.

I think what makes or breaks college is how you choose to invest yourself there. In many cases, you actually may be better pursuing some other course of action. College does not guarantee you the job you are training for but makes you eligable for it, an important distinction to understand going in.

That being said, for me, college was one of the best times of my life. On top of being able to delve into my interests, it was also my 'heal from the social damages of grade school high school' time period.For me, the experience can be divided into two sections, the time spent earning my associates degree at a community college and that which I spent earning a Bachelor's Degree in a school which focused on my field of interest.

During the time I spent earning my associates degree, I remember the thought, 'this is so different from high school' popping up all the time. People were not so quick to reject me for being different here and expressing your own view point was often encouraged in the classroom. I didn't do much social interaction with anyone there and mainly focused on my work.

Then, for my bachelor's degree, I went a college which focused on my interest. This is where things when from good to awesome for me. In class, I was also immersed in knowledge and experience. Many of my classes had not only in depth labs but also field trips to give us field experience. I was also much more interested in talking with other people who shared my interests and actually made some friends, one of whom, I am still in contact with after two years.
And I think there were a number of things working in my favor here. One was that it was easy to hold conversations when the people who I am talking to are actually a knowledgeable group who want to have conversations around the same things I am interested in. As often as not, they knew things about my field that I didn't, making for an interesting, in depth talk that could go on for great lengths of time. Another reason is that there was an unusually large population, among both students and professors, who probably had Asperger's Syndrome as well as a great many people who had friends and/or family who had it. When I would finally become confident enough to tell someone, they would often admit that they had already guessed that i had it, as they would be familiar with other people who had it.

I feel that while my college years have been some of my best so far, it could have been quite underwhelming if I had chosen to pursue a track that i was less invested in or ended up at a college not so finely focused on my interests and attracted others like myself. I got lucky while choosing to focus on my field of interest when I went to college.

Whatever you choose to do, I hope you have a good experience and get to enjoy yourself.

I like everything about college. I cannot imagine my life without it except one thing-writing task. I find it so difficult that I cannot even imagine how to deal with it. My best friend used to contact Supreme essay service as some kind of help. But I'm not I really need that.