I’m on my third degree and I’ve worked in the college effectiveness field in some form or fashion for the last fifteen years. I’ve been a teacher, a college access and persistence coach, a high school counselor, and I’ve co-founded an organization with the singular mission of supporting students get into and complete college. I’m an expert on college. Yet, college is still kicking my ass. Here is what is hard, even after all these years:

• Communication comes from a million places, all the time. I check my email, I check the threads, I check the chats, I check all the things. Sometimes a student can “do” everything they are supposed to and still be overwhelmed. In fact, a student may be overwhelmed because they ARE doing everything they are supposed to.
• Making friends is not easy and loneliness, particularly when you are away from home, is real. I’m about as comfortable in my own skin as one can be and as introverted as they come, but not having a small circle (yet) I can confidently call my people is a gap I feel every day.
• If I don’t care about certain subject matter I don’t want to do the work. Now, I think as an undergraduate this manifested in a, “I’ll never need this, don’t have the maturity to care about learning for learning sake and would rather party it up” kind of way. As a first time postgraduate student, it was, “I need this subject matter expertise right now, but I’m working sixty hours a week and I’m tearing at the seams balancing school and full-time work. Yet, I can’t look dumb in front of these smart classmates of mine, so I better get my shit done, my well-being be damned.” These days, if a particular topic doesn’t strike my learning thirst, I think, “I know for a fact I won’t use this and I really just want to go to bed early or stream some dystopian crime show because I’m tired from school, work, and being older, plus I think maybe the world is ending?” Not caring about grades has its perks (caring only about learning is LUXURY), but as someone who always cared about her grades in the past (I’m STILL hot over receiving a single A- in my previous Master’s program), it’s informative to experience what caring about learning and not marks, means for work output.
• Accessing quality mental health care and applying for disability accommodations takes a shit ton of know how and you better have the privilege of possessing clear medical records. I am diagnosed with depression, Panic Disorder, and was born with a rare adrenal disease. While the University has been quite good at providing me support, I had to do the leg work and navigating medical systems is a skill I’ve had no choice but to master. I legitimately had a moment where I thought, “This takes too much energy so maybe I just won’t.” Considering I would literally die from not having my medicines by taking that approach, I still had the thought out of sheer exhaustion. Like, what?! If you haven’t had to navigate health systems before, or weren’t born needing medicines, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to navigate the system for the first time or have the motivation to set up care in the first place.
• If you speak multiple languages, with English not being your native language, college in an English speaking programs has to be infinity hard. Many of my classmates speak another language as their first language and I’m truly astonished by how talented they are. I would just cry if we threw a language barrier on top of some of these assignments.

My hypothesis that I couldn’t really know what it was to a be a student in 2023 and how to best support the students my organization serves without going back school myself has proven true. College is hard, no matter how much experience you have.

College is Hard: A College Expert Goes Back to School…and Gets Her Ass Kicked / Pause. by is licensed under a