Epistemic status: Very uncertain, I’m interested if others agree and if any other writing or research on this exists. Don't take too seriously.
For most smart-ish upper-middle class-ish kids these days (well, maybe not *these* days; thanks covid), going to college means moving out of your house (and often your state) and into a dorm, doing schoolwork for a few hours a day, and spending the rest of your time hanging out with new friends, who will likely be very similar to you in their interests, political views, and smarts.
Gee that’s a lot of free time there...especially if you extend the trend to 2021
Source: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15954/w15954.pdf
Post-graduation, you will probably move to a new state within the next few years and your college friends will scatter across the country. The more selective and remote a school you went to, the more likely this is to occur. Even if you’re lucky enough to still live near your college friends, you will probably spend less and less time with them as 45-50 hours of your week are now spent working and commuting. There’s a good chance you might live with some of these college friends after graduation, but that’s unlikely to last more than a few years. You’ll make new friends, but you won’t spend anywhere near as much time with them as you did with your friends during college. With less time together, these friendships are unlikely to blossom as much as they did in school.
So here’s my question: Does this modern college->adult juxtaposition make adult life worse (by raising social expectations to unrealistic levels) for people than it would be if they hadn’t gone to college?
I don’t think this is a super original topic (see here for an example of one of many Reddit threads debating if college or adult life is “better”), but most debates I’ve seen online are on whether or not college life or adult life is “better”, not whether the social experience of college CAUSES adult life to be worse. There also seems to be a related phenomenon called “post-college depression”, but that seems to be focused only on the transition to adult life and is also much more severe than what I have in mind.
I don’t feel strongly about this theory, both in terms of how many people have this experience and how big of an effect it has on those people (ironically enough, I don’t talk to enough people to really test this out). But it seems plausible. It’s hard to miss something you’ve never had.
@thebarrelbrothers Big party tonight?! #funny #pov #skit
♬ original sound - The Barrel Brothers
Adult Life
It’s true that the college experience might not actually have been as appealing as we remember, since, like all memories, it looks better with hindsight and nostalgia. That said, people of all ages describe college as the best time of their lives.
But that doesn’t mean they’d necessarily want to relive college as adults. As people age and become more adulty, the things they value change as well. They might be less interested in partying and more interested in having conversations. They might be less interested in hanging out with people on a nightly basis and more interested in reading books and spending time relaxing at home. They might be more interested in raising a family. But I still think there are important elements of college that many people would take back in a heartbeat.
I mean… it really can’t get better than this?
In particular, there are three areas where adult life usually pales in comparison to college; even with changing preferences as we age. Obviously mileage varies in the degree to which these are relevant for someone, but I think for most people all of these are true:
Reduced Free Time: Just about everyone sees their free time go down from college->job, let alone for the brave souls who go from college -> job -> job AND parenting. But free time is also probably the least important area because it seems much easier to adapt to working more than it is to a completely different social environment
Reduced Friend Time: A large chunk of that additional free time in college was spent hanging out with friends
The 40-50 hour work-week (let alone other adult obligations) makes it hard to spend anywhere near a comparable amount of time with friends as you did in school
The friction to doing things in an adult world where you have to drive to see your friends and find a time that works for everyone is a big hindrance
Reduced Friend Closeness: This might be the most contentious part of my theory, but I think it really does take a lot of time for most friendships to reach a deeper level. This seems especially true for people on the more reserved/introverted side of the aisle.
I think adults tend to have more friend-groups as well (ex. High school friends, college friends, work friends, church friends, etc). Given limited adult free time, this means even less time spent with each friend and fewer chances to form “deep friendships”
My Experience
I’m sure some people reading this (if there were actually more than a few people reading but you know what I mean) will think “wow, he must not be doing adulting right”. And yes, it’s absolutely true that I and others could be doing more to accelerate the adult friend-making/deepening process.
But my point isn’t that I’m bitterly disappointed in post-college life or that it’s impossible to have strong friendships anymore. It’s just that it is much much harder to do, and many people aren’t willing or able to do it. Especially in an age where people are more likely to move away after college (I think this is true? Fits the narrative anyways) and fewer people are religious. My claim is that in a counterfactual world where adults couldn’t compare their current life to their college life, they might be somewhat happier with their current situation (counterpoint: maybe with lower expectations they would try even less hard to make adult friends).
I know a lot of people who really are able to either stay very close to their college friends or create new, strong adult friendships. These might come about through church, work, or organizations they join. Maybe for those people, the no-college counterfactual doesn’t look so different. There are also people who didn’t have amazing college experiences in the first place. I don’t think the majority of modern geographically-mobile college graduates are in these categories though.
When I think about myself and people I know (especially from Macalester), it definitely seems true that they haven’t found many post-college friends that they are extremely close to. Unfortunately, I don’t know that many people well enough to say with any certainty how widespread this is. And perhaps it just takes more than 5 years to reach the same level of friendship and so everyone I know just isn’t there yet.
This is definitely more of a thing for people who went to schools that people tend to move away from and introverts who need lots of time to become close to people. There are plenty of people I know who went to St Thomas or St Olaf or the University of Minnesota that seem to see their college friends all the time. Maybe that should become these schools biggest selling point! I kid, but also in hindsight that does seem like something people should think about (at least a little) when they pick a college!
@therealemilywilson why does this happen every time 🙄😂🥺 ##foryou
♬ original sound - Emily Wilson
Restated Thesis
I’m already way too many words in here, but I think this all fits into the whole wider debate over how to "value memories" and to what extent your present self is actually better or worse off by recollections that have no bearing on your current life beyond your remembrance of experiencing them. I don't know the answer here and I haven't read enough to know if anyone else thinks they know the answer. But the conclusion from that debate seems pretty relevant to our answer here!
It’s also related to the general topic of what people compare themselves to when assessing their well-being. Do they compare to the people around them? To their previous selves? To people from poor countries and previous generations? To rich celebrities and future generations? Or are comparisons not a huge part of someone’s life assessment? I think they pretty clearly are, but I’m not sure how much of a consensus exists beyond that basic point.
So with that said, what needs to be true for my theory to be accurate? I think there are three conditions:
Most/many people had more time with friends and made closer connections in college than they will in adult life
Having close friends remains important as people age (and family can’t completely fill this gap, nor can having a diverse group of friends from different parts of your life)
People judge their quality of life at least partially in comparison to how their life was before (AND this isn’t fully offset by people valuing good memories)
Counterpoint: If this was literally true, it would imply that going on vacations and generally doing non-repeating fun things is bad because it makes you enjoy the rest of life less. Perhaps the length of college differentiates it from these things.
I can’t find any studies comparing life satisfaction between people born deaf or blind vs those who became deaf or blind at some point in their lives but that would be an interesting data point
Hope for the future?
A more sensical (but less fun) framing of this issue is that adult social life could/should be better. I certainly agree with that, but I still think it’s pretty interesting to think about how Fun College Life affects one’s satisfaction with the rest of their life.
But with that in mind, what are some possible ways forward?
Long-term COVID: If we are able to continue generating vaccine-beating variants of COVID we can keep college students at home. Or at least prevent them from having too much fun
Make adult life better: There are thousands of words that could be written here, but there are certainly many ways to get closer to having college-esque friendships in adult life even if time will always be a big constraint. I think Bowling Alone-isation has definitely made the College Effect more of a thing in that the post-college social experience has changed much more than the college experience. Realistically church and club memberships are not going to come roaring back. I’m curious to see if the group housing trends continue to pick up, among other possibilities like friend/meetup apps.
Major Sidebar: It seems like friend apps have a few potential advantages over dating apps; you don’t lose your “best” users (ie people don’t enter relationships and stop using the app), people need less of a perfect match to be friends than to date, and people are probably more likely to make friends over common interests than to be happy with a date that has common interests
But to take advantages of those advantages they’d first need to build up a big user base
Long-term: Who knows how technology, virtual reality, and automation/AI/”post-work” will change things? It certainly seems like they all will increase our potential social options, though of course there’s the dystopia where everyone plays their Amazing New Video Games alone and never goes out (is that really a dystopia though? Sounds pretty great to me. Editors note: Come on, don’t get off topic right at the end)
Again, I don’t really know how much of a *thing* there is here. But to be safe: If you haven’t gone to college yet, go join the marines instead and then the rest of your life will be easy in comparison!
No comments:
Post a Comment