<p>Sorry in advance for this being so long.</p>
<p>I’m about to start my second year at a well-known but small private art school in a big city, and my first year was not at all what I had hoped it would be. The classes are great- I finished the first year with a 4.0, I’m near the top of the class, I love my major, and I don’t feel at all overwhelmed- but I’m having a lot of trouble fitting in. I don’t look or act like a stereotypical “artsy” kid. I don’t smoke, I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, I wear preppy clothes, and my hair is its natural color. I’m not into anime or high fashion or being hipster. I own exactly zero fedoras. I feel like I have next to nothing in common with the people here. At a school that is exclusively for artists, basically all of the people here look exactly like you would expect art students to look. Every time I go home for a break, I tell myself that I must be exaggerating and that when I get back, I’ll see more people like me. But I am always proved wrong. When I look around, I don’t see potential lifelong friends.</p>
<p>There are 2 dorms and only one main academic building that contains the cafeteria. It’s largely a commuter campus. We have four sports teams and very few clubs, most of which are directly associated with majors I am not pursuing. There isn’t much student life going on- if you want stuff to do, you have to go off campus, where everything costs money. I go home most weekends because the campus is so boring, but then I end up watching old movies with my mom. Then I always cry the entire drive back to my dorm.</p>
<p>I’m from a small town and I learned the hard way that I’m not a city person. Unfortunately, I didn’t really consider what student life would be like when I was choosing a college. This has always been my dream school because of the programs it offers (my major is fairly uncommon) and I never even took into consideration what I would be doing when I wasn’t working. I only liked it because it had my major and was close to home.</p>
<p>I’ve never told any of my friends from high school about what I’m going through. When they ask me how college is going, I lie and say it’s great or I just focus on how great my classes are, which is the truth. Sometimes I joke about all the artsy students here and how I’m the weird one, just to get them to stop asking me about it. I haven’t even told my long-distance boyfriend about it because he’s very social and he’s having a great time at his college- I’m afraid he’ll look down on me for being a hermit.</p>
<p>To top it off, several years before coming to college, I was diagnosed with depression and began seeing a therapist. She kept telling me that college would be so much better, it would be sooo easy to make friends, and so on.
Besides me, my mom is the only one who knows that I’m depressed. But she doesn’t really believe it’s an actual problem- she thinks that with a little effort, I can get over it. I used to try to communicate to her about what a hard time I’m having, but she just doesn’t understand. Since college started, I haven’t really told her about any of this. She’s borrowing a lot of money to make it possible for me to attend my ‘dream’ school and I don’t want her to feel bad about spending so much money for me to have such a terrible time. </p>
<p>So since my mom doesn’t understand, I’m afraid to tell my boyfriend, and none of my high school friends know, I’m feeling pretty alone in this. Does anyone have any advice?</p>