It’s okay to be unhappy

If I could sit my freshman self down at the dawn of my Princeton career, I’d have quite a few things to say. Don’t take that 9 a.m. class. Get your quantitative reasoning requirement done early. Try out for everything. Attend every lecture. Go pick up your favorite sweater from the laundry room right now because it will get stolen. However, all of these little things would only come after I told her the one thing I truly wish someone had said to me. I would take poor, frightened me by the shoulders and say, “Give college six months before you decide how you feel.”

I came to Princeton somewhat unwillingly. I had wanted to go to a smaller school further from home, and Princeton Preview had been a rather unpleasant experience. Princeton was the best choice, though, and I prepared myself to don the orange and black all the same. I met wonderful people those first few months, joined clubs, picked interesting classes and navigated the Street with a mixture of awe and curiosity. I didn’t hate it, as I had expected I would, but I also didn’t love it. I felt like I was at Princeton, but not a part of it. In my naive mind, college was the great peak of one’s life — but those first couple of months simply did not feel like they were set to be the pinnacle of mine. On Facebook, my friends were posting photos of wild parties and large groups of friends arm-in-arm, the epitome of instant best friends. Those people, I thought, were really enjoying college. I, on the other hand, was still finding my footing.

When fall break came around, I could not wait to go home. My friends came together and told their great college stories, each attempting to outdo the other. I, too, had stories to tell, and from these no one could have known that I was still not thrilled about Princeton. I only realized much later that we were all playing the same game — everyone was putting on a brave, but not quite honest, face. However, at the time, all I could think was that perhaps I had made the wrong choice in school. Perhaps I should be elsewhere.

Sometime between fall break and winter break, something changed. One day, I realized that I hadn’t thought about how happy I was in a while, because I just was. Happiness at Princeton had snuck up on me. I wish I could put my finger on the thing that did it, but I’m not so sure that I can. It may have simply been a growing comfort with college life or that my roots finally took hold. It may have been that my relationships had gotten stronger or my definition of “home” had shifted. I do know that as fall passed into winter, I unconsciously fell in love with Princeton. I was in exactly the right place.

I tell this to all the freshmen who will listen, regardless of whether they go to Princeton or elsewhere. In fact, I told this to the nice, wide-eyed freshman boy who joined me in Rockefeller Dining Hall last week. It’s the one thing that people don’t seem to tell you, and yet I think it’s the most important — you don’t have to be happy right away, and most people aren’t. I had two friends transfer from their respective schools at the end of their first semester. One of these girls was the same one whose photos crowded my newsfeed with depictions of the seemingly perfect college experience — lots of friends, parties, trips into the City, a date to every event — but she was miserable, and so, too, it turns out, were many of my friends who needed more than a couple months to adjust. As you grow up, college is held up as this wonderful, freeing oasis, and, thus, when you are thrust into it, you expect it to be as such from the start. When it’s not, there’s a sense that you’ve done something wrong because no one wants to admit that reality has not quite matched up to reputation.

These first few weeks are a false indicator of what college is like. The fast pace of freshman week, tryouts, rush, shopping classes and endless meetings keep freshmen too busy to really think about whether or not they’re happy here. However, as the dust settles over the next month or so, the thought may creep up. There’s nothing wrong with that.

This is why I say, give it six months — not two or three. It seems like a painfully long time, but that truly is how long it took me to find my footing. There may even be some students who need the year to really get a sense of how they feel about Princeton. Either way, do not deny yourself the opportunity to fall in love with this place by abiding by an imagined time frame or comparing yourself to others’ apparent college experience.

Princeton has been wonderful, difficult, enlightening and stressful. It has been the site of my greatest highs and lows, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Freshman me would never have expected that. However, six months make all the difference, and three years later you might be happy you gave it a real chance, too.

Chelsea Jones is an English major fromRidgefield, Conn. She can be reached at chelseaj@princeton.edu.