I never thought I’d find myself struggling to fit in among college students.
If you asked me three years ago, I would’ve told you school isn’t for me, and that’s why I’m selling you cans of Copenhagen in our ship’s store. Just a few months ago, I was serving in the United States Navy, a structured world where I knew my place and purpose. I had people around me who understood the challenges we faced, and there was a sense of camaraderie and belonging.
But now, as a student fresh out of the military, I’m experiencing an unexpected isolation. I feel like an outsider in a sea of 18-year-olds who still live at home.
There’s this disorienting feeling that I’m too old to be here but too young to be taken seriously elsewhere.
My status is between one and the other; I am no longer in the military and not quite a college student. It’s a strange place. Most of my peers are freshly out of high school, while I’m 24 and coming from a completely different stage of life and set of experiences. There’s a six-year age gap, but it feels like we’re worlds apart. On the flip side, I always get compliments saying I look like a teenager, but who’s gonna tell them 24 is not old?
If you happen to be reading this, still deciding whether or not to separate, I’m not here to scare you into staying in because here’s the good news: it’s all worth it.
Despite how foreign it feels, I challenge myself to read, engage, and make this my new home. The ultimate reward of all this is I get to prove myself wrong.
There were internal and even some external voices telling me I couldn’t do it. That “the real world” would eat me alive, I’d be lost, and I wouldn’t belong. And, to some extent, they were right. But here I am day after day, even though I’m scared and I miss my friends. I’m doing it, carving out a new path for my future. This is how you build self-confidence. In the famous words of Andre Gide, “Man (or woman) cannot discover new oceans until he (or she) has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
It hasn’t been easy, but how boring would it be if it was? I miss having the certainty of belonging; I still deal with loneliness. But I’m also proud of myself for making this bet and betting on a future I control. Whenever I am in a classroom and in a room full of people with experiences that are so dissimilar to mine, I remind myself what I’m building. It’s my risk. Also, I’m getting paid to be here, so stop complaining. I don’t know what I’m getting myself into yet, but I’m prepared for it. Even though the Navy wasn’t ultimately for me, it set me up for success, and I am grateful for that.
If you are in this position or thinking about leaving the military or whatever life-changing event you’re going through, you’re not alone. Feeling lost or out of place is an experience we can’t escape. But arriving anyway, regardless, is a heroic thing. It’s proof that you’re making progress, even when it doesn’t feel like it, or it feels like you’re stepping out on your head. I’ll leave you with this quote by Frederick Douglas:
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Jocine Sergi-Sablan is a Nutrition student at Southwestern College.
