The romantic idea is sickly sweeter than reality
By Jai-leah Garcia
College movies are kind of a scam. Let me explain. I watched Legally Blonde recently and I no longer had that mesmerized feeling as I once did when I first saw it. Back then, I was mesmerized with the college culture. Everyone was so free and independent, and living in a dorm looked so fun. This time, I was more angry towards the movie. I wasn’t sure why. Was I angry with myself? Angry at the message that dedication and hard work can get us through? Why did this movie make me so angry?
Movies make college seem like either this fun, party filled time where students barely go to class or the golden years of finding your lifelong partner and best friends that you will keep forever. Pop culture seems to be romanticizing college more than ever before. And yet, the actual college experience seem less stress-free than ever. There are enormous loans, a rough job market and lately, Covid-19. Going to college no longer feels like the stress-free step it used to be.
In my case, there’s an extra barrier between the movies and real life. I live at home. There isn’t really a movie explaining a college student living at home and going to school while working at the same time. Our culture loves the idea that once you enter college, you go off and say goodbye to mom and dad and you now enter this independent world where parents are not on your back all the time. I, meanwhile, am entering adulthood while living at home.
Because college movies don’t show what college is like for a student like me, let me show you.
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In our culture, commuting to and from college is only really shown through the example of community college. But even in those examples, it feels as though if you live at home, you have no independence. Instead, it’s viewed as if you are super dependent on mom and dad and are not able to become independent because you live at home. That’s definitely not my experience.
I’m paying for part of my college education, so I have two jobs. My days usually start with waking up at 4:30 am to get ready to go to work. I get dressed, and drive up to Stafford to arrive at my job in morning childcare from 5:45am-7:30am. It’s a few hours, but it gets the day going. Once I get through the thirty minute commute, I lay back into bed for my power nap, and that usually is about an hour before my first class. Some days my school day starts at 9:30 am while other days it starts at 10 am.
On days that I start at 10 am, I’m usually in class for most of the day until 12 pm. 12 pm I head home to eat my lunch for an hour, and on the second hour of my lunch break I start driving my parents to work. Then I head back to class. After my my last class, which runs from 2 - 3:15 pm, I check my planner and it is filled to the brim with meetings. I fit in a snack to keep me going and off I go to different meetings for most of the afternoon.
Once meetings are all done, I am heading home for the day to feed my dog and to walk him. Usually during this time, I usually get a call to pick up a parent. Then there’s pick up, drop off, doing some homework and eventually sleep. Where’s the time to have dinner with friends or to have a boyfriend? I can barely keep up. Let alone even think of going to a party on a weeknight. Because the next morning starts early again.
Looking at my schedule in a typical week, it is very different from a typical college student. It’s interesting to hear my peers talk about how busy my schedule is or when they will ever see me again. While I am mad that I don’t have the privilege of a “typical” college life, I guess there are ways that I have more real independence than my friends who live in the dorms do. They go home on weekends to see their parents and go right back to being a kid.
But the relationship that I have with my parents is actually changing. My parents always knew that I would be busy once I entered college. Working two jobs in order to pay tuition and bills along with my own needs has taken them off my back for the most part. They’re getting better at getting off my back about my responsibilities, and they have also had a clear understanding of how much I’ve sacrificed in order to make ends meet. When I once talked to my mom about how much I work and how much I do versus another college student, I remember a look that she gave me.
It wasn’t an angry look, but more like an understanding look, a look that was different. She looked at me like an adult, having an adult conversation. She looked at me as if I was a young, independent woman. That moment was a moment that gave me a different perspective.
We were in the car, on the way to my mom’s job. It was a typical conversation, the ones where I would rant about my day and my mom would listen. I remember I was having a really bad time with myself and where I was at with college. I talked to her about what we had discussed in one of my classes about sacrifices. The more I talked about college, the more serious my tone got. It was no longer a conversation between mother and daughter, but a conversation between two adults.
It almost felt in that car ride like the falling action in a movie. It felt different, and maybe it was different. Talking to my mom and having her see me as an adult felt new to me. It felt as though maybe all these sacrifices that I made had a greater impact than I expected.
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I know that I haven’t had the typical college experience, but the main college experience that culture loves to express is independence. I’ve gained a different independence which is becoming independent from mom and dad. I don’t depend on them to pay for my necessities or even help me with the bills. My independence has stemmed from the amount of work I have to do, which gives me a different perspective of the real world. The “real world” in a college perspective is taking care of yourself.
For so long, I’ve been mad that my life is not the privileged college life I always dreamed of. However, I have gained something from my own college experience. Yes, school is like a third job for me, but it is a job that I have to do. But I’m not as upset about it. Sure, the lack of a schedule is one that I wish was more achievable for me, but the independence is one that I would say I prefer over the movies. Do I still wish that Hollywood would make a more realistic form of the college movie? Yes.
But I realize that it will be people like me, who have other, less privileged experience and work hard to get an education, who will be the ones to create that.