As first years sat on the Main Quad listening to President Safa Zaki deliver her remarks—welcoming the Class of 2028 into all that Bowdoin College has to offer—many of you likely couldn’t help but think about what these four years have in store with a mixture of excitement and nerves. The next four years—or three, or two, or one, depending on your class year—may not always be what you imagined in those moments, but we hope you can embrace the highs and lows that come with life at Bowdoin College.

Chances are, you have heard the phrase “College is the best four years of your life” so many times that it’s become an earworm causing you to constantly ask: “Is it really?”

As you begin your time at Bowdoin, it is important to remember that this phrase ignores the challenges that your college experience will present you with.

Conversations at the family dinner table and saturated photos on your Instagram feed may paint a picture of an epic, joyous college experience. This mythologized version of college disregards the less glamorous parts of the journey you are about to embark on. Crying in the H-L bathroom, counting down the days until Thanksgiving break and dreading an awkward Bowdoin hello are all ordinary experiences lived by so many on this campus.

These four years don’t have to be the best of your life. Generalizing four years under one label makes it hard to see the variety of experiences throughout. A night crying over a bad grade or a breakup doesn’t have to discount the times when the changing leaves on the quad looked beautiful on your walk to class or when you laughed especially hard over dinner in Moulton.

The spectrum of emotions and experiences for each student are unique and undefinable. Advertising them as equal for generations of students is impossible and unrealistic.

If you are feeling alone, chances are that others feel the same way. These years, though transformative, do not need to be the best. That alone should be liberating. Ask that person to hang out, join that club, go to the Pub. There is no expectation that you have to enjoy every little thing here—just experience it.

It is all too easy to forget that Bowdoin is ultimately a place that prepares you for something more. The greatest gift that many of us receive from Bowdoin will be how we apply what we learn and experience here to our lives beyond.

This is not to say that your years at Bowdoin can’t be a fun, wonderful, joy-filled time—and we hope they are. But, college is often sold as an all-consuming, picture-perfect experience, and it is easy to feel like the world outside the bounds of Maine Street, Longfellow Avenue and Harpswell and Bath Roads doesn’t exist.

It’s more than okay if your experiences here don’t match the expectations that you or other people have. Bowdoin has a lot to offer us. This is a place full of life, love and certainly learning, but life beyond the College can be so much more.

This editorial represents the view of the Editorial Board, which is comprised of Sara Coughlin, Catalina Escobedo, Shihab Moral, John Schubert, Maile Winterbottom, Kristen Kinzler and Vaughn Vial.