“Get ready for the best four decades of your existence!”

This phrase was like a bad jingle actively playing on a broken document in my head main up to my time at the College of Florida. Spouse and children, lecturers, bosses and random Fb mothers were being all self-confident that university was like Candyland: magical and the epitome of life. 

Who would have guessed that they had been all spot-on, and nevertheless, ironically, so completely wrong?

Anna Wilder is a student at the University of Florida

My initial eight months and 17 times at UF had been Candyland. In August 2019, I moved into Beaty Towers, a brick landmark total of social 18-yr-olds and cockroaches, tasting liberty for the to start with time. I achieved random friends on a shaky elevator, went on late-night time ramen runs and shared a little room with a stranger. Even smelling the rubbish chute outside my dorm and being woken up the sixth overnight fire alarm in a thirty day period was magical.