Challenge me, please.
Something I struggle with occasionally is, I express a challenge I’m experiencing in a way that I want someone to have an understanding of what I’m currently working through. The typical reply I get is “that’s college”. 1. That is the least helpful reply. 2. This implies the college experiences don’t equate to real life. 3. I’ve had much more challenging situations to work through in career and life-it just happens that the college experience it the most relevant to me right now.
What I’m trying to accomplish is engaging in more intellectual conversations. What many people don’t understand is that I’m really excited to have the opportunity to tackle these challenges that I face in college. Maybe I should learn to phrase how I express myself differently so I have more of a chance to have intellectual discussions regarding the challenge. Or maybe I need to have these conversations with people who didn’t go to college just to tick something off of their list. Or maybe I need to have a clever reply to those who choose to give the ‘been there, done that’ attitude.
College to me is an incredible privilege that I feel very fortunate to experience at this age, with a clear goal, and relevant career experience. I’m trying my best to get the most out of college and take better ownership of where I’m at. Some of these noises are discouraging and I need to be better at filtering out the comments that don’t serve me.