College, the best years of your life?
/This was written with the college aged reader in mind. I originally wrote it in 2005, but it's relevant as many of my friends head off to college.
You, like me, have probably heard the phrase, "College is the best time of your life". I want to run an idea by you. Here it is.....If college is really the best years of your life, then you have a pretty crappy life. Let me explain what I mean.
If you are in college from the ages 18-22, then you still have 60+ years to live. If the next 60+ years don't compare to 4 or 5 years you spent in college, didn't your life peak kinda early? Isn't everything after college kind of a let down? If you get the idea that college is the best time of your life from older people who look back and think that, I would suggest that those older people are suffering from a mid-life crisis of some sort, and at the very least they are the type of person you may not want to emulate.
I am not saying that college shouldn't be great. It should. It should be the best years of your life..... so far. Just as high school was hopefully better than junior high. But why settle for peaking at the age of 22? Why not make your 20's even better than college? Why not make your 30's better than your 20's and so on. I've been in my 30's for almost 9 years now and I have to say, they are pretty awesome. I had an incredible college experience. I loved all of it except for the tests and overly long papers. I made great friends that I still talk to and hang out with. I'm still in close contact with my 16 best college guy friends. We get together for a weekend every year. We hang out, share whats going on, and pray for one another, and basically stay up all night and laugh, just like when we were in college. My prayer for you as a college student is that you will make friends like that in school. Friends who will be with you for the rest of your life. Friends who will stand up to you when you are wrong. Friends who will stand by you when you are hurt, and friends who will point you to the one thing that is more important than anything else...... Christ.