Thanks to friends, older family members, your high school teachers, and even Hollywood, by the time your freshman year rolls around, you already have a million expectations about college — expectations about how well you’ll do in your classes, what your social life will be like, the way your dorm will look, etc.
But if you followed your high school significant other to college, it’s likely you had an entirely different set of expectations. And, at some point, it became clear to you whether or not those expectations were met.
Maybe you specifically changed your own plans and went to your high school sweetheart’s college to be together. But a few months in, their GPA dropped, and they got put on academic probation. You offered over and over to help them with their work, but they refused, and you ended up fighting constantly. Eventually, they ended up telling you they wanted to drop out and go back home.
Perhaps you expected to have the same relationship you did in high school, but when you got there, you became engrossed in the “typical” college experience — joining clubs, making friends, going to parties — while your partner ended up getting super involved with student government and quickly became preoccupied with their newly-developed political aspirations. You then realized that you both have extremely different priorities and grew apart.
Or, maybe you were apprehensive about going to the same college, and you kind of secretly expected your relationship to fall apart because everyone told you it would. But, you both ended up getting really involved in Greek life, which allowed you to strengthen your friendship, learn more about each other, and create a deep, life-long bond. It brought you closer, and the two of you are still together.
