You have always heard that your time in college will be the best years of your life. Movies and social media have made you expect great friendships, parties, dating, and more.
As you may have learned, movies and social media can lie! While there are certainly people out there who are enjoying themselves, you may not be. You might find college notably boring!
Why Is College So Boring?
1. Your Major Is Hard
With a challenging major, you will likely not spend much time socializing. While many people praise the social aspects of college, they may have taken more basic courses than you did!
Having a more challenging major or more frequent classes means you must spend more time studying if you want to pass. This allotted time naturally takes away from your free time.
With less free time, you will be able to socialize or get to know your fellow students. If you are a social person, this will make your college life seem far more boring!
If your major is related to a career you want to pursue, you may have no choice but to stick with it.
Having noted that, if you are not 100% sure about your major and find it too difficult, try switching to something a little bit easier.
In terms of employment opportunities, it is often the degree itself that matters rather than which field the degree concerns itself with.
Either way, it is best to get something related to your career- if you are having trouble with boredom, choose easier courses!
2. You Don’t Know Anybody
Studies estimate that up to 69% of college-bound students who move for college will move to somewhere else within their state.
This statistic means that 31% of students who move will choose to move out of their state to attend college.
While students who move make up only a fraction of all college students, it is still a large fraction, and you may find yourself among that group!
Unless you have purposefully chosen to go to the same college as some of your friends, the odds are high that you won’t know many of your classmates if you are a student who has moved!
Making new friends can be extraordinarily difficult when you do not know anybody. You will have to socialize with a new group of people you have never met.
This lack of friends means that you may not be undergoing any social activities, spending most days sitting alone in your room. This lifestyle can be incredibly boring for many people.
If you believe that your lack of social life is making your life boring, try joining some clubs or going on any college-sponsored activities!
While these are great options for you to meet other people, they can also help get you out of your room and do some activities that will make you less bored.
3. Societal Expectations And Family Pressure
Some people do not personally want to go to college but enroll anyway because they feel pressured by their families to get a degree.
Other people feel forced into college because many companies prefer to hire employees with some sort of degree.
If you are enrolled in college to please other people and not to improve yourself and your education, you will find it boring, as you don’t want to be there in the first place!
4. You Had High Expectations
Many western societies promote college as a fun time for everybody involved, with movies such as Animal House promoting the idea of colleges as fun, party-based locations.
People often claim that college will be the best years of your life, giving many other people high expectations of what college will be like.
If your college does not meet your expectations, you will be disappointed. With this disappointment, college may seem boring and pointless!
5. You Are Not Interested In Your Major
It is a tale as old as time: somebody enters college and picks up a major that their family pressures them into for success, such as legal, business, or engineering fields.
If you are pursuing a degree you have no interest in, whether it is difficult or not, you will likely feel far more bored during your college years than your fellow students will.
When choosing a college major, it is vital to pick a major that you are interested in so that you have the motivation to complete the curriculum.
Without motivation, you will care less about your coursework which you may find notoriously boring. With such a boring selection of coursework, it can make your time in college seem dull!
6. You Are Not Social
Some people are just not social butterflies, and that’s alright! Everybody has different needs, which means that some people do not need or want social interaction as much as other people.
If you are not a social person, you will likely spend most of your time studying or performing solo activities.
Everybody needs some alone time here and there, but staying by yourself all of the time can be boring!
7. You Hate Studying
Ultimately, colleges are educational institutions. People who choose to party all their life may not realize it, but colleges are schools, just like your high school!
If you don’t like studying, you may not like college. Many experts recommend that students should study for 50-60 hours per week.
This number is outrageous for most college students who simply do not have that amount of time available, but the sentiment remains. In college, studying is important.
If you are the type of person who finds studying boring, you will likely find college as a whole boring.
8. You Don’t Do Campus Activities
You have already read many times that campus activities can help you make friends, but they can also provide great time-killers on their own.
Many college clubs, or even the college itself, may host fun activities and events for their students to partake in to alleviate boredom or stress.
9. College Is Time-Consuming
Between classes, studying, and any potential job you may have to pay off your tuition, college and college-related activities can take up a large portion of your time.
With college taking up so much of your life, you can grow bored of it very easily. Nobody wants one aspect of their life to take over all of their free time!
10. College Isn’t For You
Ultimately, college is not for everybody, and that is okay! Everybody has to find their way in life, and for many people, that does not include college.
People may not have the attention span for college, or simply do not need a college degree to enter their field of choice. If you are among these people, you may find college boring!
11. You Are Too Smart
It may not be wise to boost your ego too much, but sometimes college can be boring because you are too intelligent for your coursework!
If you spent a large part of your educational career breezing through all of your classes with an easy ‘A’ or a similar passing grade, you will not likely have much of a challenge in college.
Of course, there will always be notoriously challenging courses and fields to enter, such as medical fields or even an architectural degree.
If you are going into college looking for a challenging degree that leads to a fulfilling career that utilizes your intelligence, you may have to look for some more specialized courses.
However, the vast majority of college courses may not intellectually stimulate you!
If you enter college solely to become qualified in a certain degree you are interested in, you may find the courses to be easier than expected.
Anything could be boring without a challenge, and college is no exception! If you find yourself bored, try taking more challenging courses. Set your goals a little bit higher than they are!
To learn more, you can also read our posts on why college is so stressful, why high school is so hard, and why science is so boring.
In Conclusion
To wrap it all up, there are many reasons why college can be so boring. These reasons can range from issues with the college itself to what kind of personality you have.
You may have issues with particularly difficult coursework which restricts your free time, or you may not enjoy social activities as much as other people. No matter what, college can be boring!