Peeling back the layers to find yourself

College is not nearly as glamorous as I thought it would be.

I guess when I pictured myself in college, I always pictured a when-everything-is-established moment, somewhere during the end of freshman or sophomore year or whatever year it finally feels like you actually belong at college.

I never imagined this part of it, the hard part where the cafeteria is still full of strangers, I have no idea what my professor expects from a paper and despise the fact that college teaches us to do our work to impress the professor -- this is even worse than the "learning" to earn a good grade and not for the sake of learning that happened in high school. Besides trying to dig myself out of a mountain of homework, there's finding time to hang out with people and get my housekeeping things finished, like my laundry and cleaning the bathroom.

With all of this stress, maybe I'll relocate to Canada. That's what one of my professors suggested when I talked with him about feeling overwhelmed. It isn't a bad idea, but then I would still be faced with the fact of figuring out what to do with my life.

Not that college is all bad. I'm learning how surprising other people can be, how to do college and how to form my own beliefs about what the university and the world says is or isn't OK. I'm learning that I love the person God is gently molding me into. I am becoming a strong, independent young woman who desperately needs complete reliance on him for everything: protection, joy, acceptance and affirmation.

Every time I have started looking to potential friends for these things in the lonely moments of being four-and-a-half hours away from home, I have come up feeling unsure of who I am and selfish and he has focused me back on him and his reasons, timing and perfect love.

I always thought of college as a goal, something to work toward that would feel final. If anything, college is more of a transition period than anything I've ever experienced. It's not a ton of students at a university who have all the answers; it's a bunch of kids in this place still just as confused about things as we were a year or two ago, trying to figure out who we want to be and what we want to do with our one precious life.

Sometimes this breaks my heart, and sometimes it is incredibly beautiful. All of these experiences seem to be covered with one giant cocoon, all of the hard, victorious and everything-in-between moments rolled into one that whispers, sometimes screams, beautiful and triumphant, just in the fact that we are doing this, we are becoming.

Maybe I'll rethink my bag sitting by the door all packed and ready for Canada.

Mia Pohlman graduated in May from Perryville High School, where she wrote a monthly column about being a high school senior. She will continue her column through her first year at Truman State University.