Opinion | Why people who say college “was the best four years of my life” may be right

I’ve always looked down on those who claim that college was the best four years of their lives. For me, it was a sign that those individuals peaked early in their lives and were just painting their frat parties and formals in the unreliable light of nostalgia. Yet, as my senior year approaches more quickly than I thought possible, the reality that my friends and I will all go our separate ways in less than a year is hitting harder than expected. Grad schools, internships and jobs are no longer blurry, hypothetical things on the horizon — they’ve become rapidly approaching deadlines bound to send us off in all different directions. But these are the things expected of us in order to make it in the world, to be successful, but it leaves me with the question — why have we made it so lonely at the top? 

For those who miss the good old days of their college years, I imagine what they miss the most isn’t necessarily the booze or the classes, though they might miss both, but rather, the community that one finds at university. In college, the list of people you know stretches indefinitely — roommates, their partners, classmates, coworkers— it’s a massive web. But as we get older, that web often condenses until it eventually dwindles into your own remote family. While it’s easy to pass this phenomenon off as “becoming an adult” and “getting older,” these statements ignore the fact that we have structurally ensured that loneliness is an outcome of our lives. 

In a study conducted online that sampled 55,000 respondents from across the world, one out of every three people of all ages reported that they often feel lonely. Among these, the loneliest group were 16-to-24-year-olds, 40% of whom reported feeling lonely “often or very often.” It’s not a coincidence that these are the years during which you’re moving away from family and friends. 

Loneliness, recently, has become an issue of class. Through the early parts of American history, most people lived in large, sprawling households filled with uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents. The door was always open and the house was always full. These were working families, mostly farming families. Until 1850, roughly three-quarters of Americans older than 65 lived with children and kids. As industrialization settled in, young men and women left their extended families to chase the American dream. The decades unfolded, and more and more people moved away from home to follow wealth and success. As of now, 80% of adults live less than a two hour drive from their parents. But, if you have a college or graduate degree, you’re more likely to live farther away from family and friends. Adults with less than 16 years of schooling — a known indicator of socioeconomic status — are 54% more likely than those with at least a college degree to live close to their parents. 

As somebody considering grad school, the prospect of uprooting myself away from everything and everyone I know to move across the country is constantly on my mind. Education leads to specialization, which often requires moving to a new place. We move for the internship or job opportunity — it’s what we’re expected to do to climb the economic ladder. As we get richer, we become more mobile as we have the resources to do so. In other words, we atomize — the larger units of community and family break down into the smallest unit — our social fabric disintegrates into just the individual. 

As a society, we’ve set the default against community towards the values of isolation. When we visualize success and wealth, we visualize privacy — private jets, private cars, private islands. Wealth has become all about escaping the public to be alone with yourself. Nothing indicates this more than our emphasis on private home ownership. We want the beautiful house in the suburbs with the huge yard or the mansion tucked away from other people. While there is nothing wrong about either of these images, they are creating spatial structures that design for atomization, for loneliness. We sprawl ourselves out away from each other for a rather empty image of wealth. 

Sheila Liming, the author of “Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time,” states that, “In American culture, in particular, privacy and private space are synonymous with pride.” If a person lacks these things — a private home, their own room, their own mode of transportation — we look down on them immediately, conflating their lack of privacy as an indication of slacking off. Yet, more collective living and closer relationships with friends and family could be the cure for our rampant loneliness. 

But we naturally have a resistance to communal living due to the cultural emphasis on the nuclear family, another structure that ensures loneliness. For the brief window of time that the nuclear family was a functioning family unit, we must also remember it was a communal enterprise. There were neighborhood barbeques, football games, neighbors coming in and out of homes without announcement or warning. But now, the nuclear family is a stand alone structure completely detached from friends and family, yet we still continue to uphold its structure as the cultural norm. Despite the nuclear family’s failures, we continue to isolate ourselves inside our homes and place all the stress and pressure on our small, intrafamiliar circle.

The longest study of human life has found a simple answer to what brings us health and happiness — good relationships. It’s that feeling of connection that makes us the most fulfilled. Nobody is surprised. But despite this, the thought of choosing friends over your career seems insane — we just aren’t socialized to prioritize friendships, even when it makes us much happier. Instead, we continue down the road of loneliness in hopes it brings us success, with happiness never being a factor in shaping this future. 

Luckily, Americans are moving toward extended and forged families. Of course, the idea of a chosen family has long been a part of queer communities. Slowly, other households are taking on the same idea of a family that goes beyond just bloodlines. Yet, the decision to choose this more collective type of lifestyle is difficult to imagine, especially when the structures we have put in place convince us there is an impossibility or impracticality. We barely have time to question why our futures look the way they do. We’re too busy working towards them. 

In recent months, my friends and I have joked about the idea of all of us living together after college. In the beginning, it sounded ridiculous, nothing more than a passing phase of the liberal arts college mindset. But, as time has gone on it made me reconsider what exactly I want to prioritize in my life — what if I put my friendships and relationships on the same level as economic success? Yet, even knowing that doing so would make me happier still doesn’t make it that easy. The patterns of atomization are more deeply ingrained than we think. But it does push me to reimagine a future where community and relationships don’t come second to success and wealth. 

Ebonee Rice-Nguyen writes primarily about political, social and cultural issues. Write to her at EJR76@pitt.edu.