Oh my, college is "fun," let me tell you.
Okay, story time. I lived the first eighteen years of my life as a spoiled brat that always got what he wanted from his parents. So naturally when I had to leave the protection of my parents to attend my first semester of college, I had no idea what to do. I couldn't buy my own food. I couldn't talk to people. I honestly couldn't do anything. Well, except get good grades somehow. First semester classes were disappointingly easy. And yeah, my parents did visit me at the end of every week, and I got to see my grandparents about once a week too, which was great because I rarely got to see them beforehand. Regardless, I was stressed and felt awful for about the entire semester, and when it was over, I was not feeling good at all. Did I mention that very little budget went into maintaining the freshman housing? No? Well now you know.
So after the winter break it was time for the second semester. Luckily, due to my first semester crash course in not starving to death, I handled living in a dorm a little better. Sure, I still didn't know how to buy anything, and I still couldn't talk to people, but at least the act of not living at home wasn't giving me constant panic attacks. So at first things were looking good. Then I got hit with Foundations of Higher Mathematics.
A quick disclaimer: I'm currently a Computer Science/Applied Mathematics Double Major. Your mileage will--not can--vary. I know a lot of people who adore being at college or uni, and appreciate the extra freedom and whatnot that comes with it. I understand that. If you're not taking Math or CS, you probably won't even deal with Foundations of Higher Mathematics at all, and even if you do, I can't guarantee you'll have my experience. Alright, disclaimer over. Let the rant begin.
Fountations of Higher Mathematics is essentially a logic course, where they teach you how to do proofs. Some of the example proofs given are incredibly useful for later math courses. Thing is, this class requires you to change your mindset. In previous math courses, you had to remember formulas and apply them. Here you have to figure out the logical steps to get from point A to point B flawlessly. I was not ready for this, and combined with the entire class being a single semester and me still not being used to college life...second semester was easily one of the worst times of my life. I'm convinced that, even if this were the only class I had to deal with that semester, it wouldn't have been any better. At least I finally learned how to buy food at a restaurant. But the fact that it took me until then to learn that is honestly kinda pathetic.
So then came summer break, followed by third semester. I was hoping this semester would have been better. I was wrong.
Last time it was Math that screwed me over, this time it was Computer Science. The idea with this course was that you were given a pre-existing codebase, and your job was to add new functionality to the codebase, in little steps assigned as projects that teach you more things about coding. This may sound daunting to the non-programmers, but as a CS Major I didn't expect this to be too difficult. I mean, I've already done programming. How could this be anything but more programming? Haha no. The due dates were incredibly strict, and the projects were much larger than I first expected them to be. There were other problems going on as well, which I don't feel confident I could explain in a way that's actually correct. Programming is not easy, I already knew that. But man did that class really open my eyes. I definitely believe I became a better programmer in the end, but the stress was honestly not worth it at all. Combined with the new living situation, this semester was easily around as bad as the previous one.
I'm currently on winter break. Here's hoping the fourth semester is slightly less traumatizing. One of my classes is Art! ...except apparently the teacher is pretentious, and not the person I initially signed up for, so this might end up being my next traumatizing class. I also still don't know how to talk to people. Grab some popcorn, this could be very entertaining for an outside observer.
Your college experience might end up being completely different, though, if the large disparity between the answers you got is any indication. Could be amazing, could be awful. You won't know until it happens.