The overall meaning of this image essay is to show a freshman’s idea of what college will be like versus how they feel when classes start going. The image essay is a short story, resembling a comic, that is meant to be light-hearted, relatable, and something to give the reader a laugh. The theme of the essay is essentially expectations versus reality. It is the expectations that a student has going into his/her first year of college versus how reality feels once they are settled in and classes have begun. 

The title is done in a mix of bright and dark colors to symbolize the mixed emotions that a student would feel towards their first year of college. The title is, in itself, a symbol for college. From the outside it looks pretty and fun, but from the inside it’s a little lame, stressful, and sort of sucks from time to time.  

The first image is of a little girl, who looks to be about 3, with the words “I’m so excited!” across the top. This image is meant to symbolize the incoming freshman. Before the semester starts freshman are very excited to see what the future holds. They anticipate parties and club meetings and making new friends, they’re excited to be away from Mom and Dad, and feel ready to be adults. Just like children, they are not always thinking about the bigger picture. In the third image there is a young man, who seems to be around the age of 19, stressing out over two large piles of books and homework assignments. This shows the realization that most freshman will come to, being college is more about studying, homework, and papers, rather than parties, friends, and being adult.

The second image is a depiction of all the cliché things that most people tend to expect during their college lives. The image is filled with little symbols in collage type form. The sporadic design of the collage could be seen as a foreshadowing to the messy road ahead and how college will feel. This image contributes to the theme because it shows all of the expectations that people have when they think about going to college. However, those things are not always the reality.

The final image is a SpongeBob meme in which he is burying himself under the sand and overtop of him the word “nope” appears. The text above this picture says “avoiding responsibilities like”, implying that SpongeBob is burying himself to avoid doing any of his responsibilities. College students can relate to this because whenever they have a large homework load, or a major test to study for, all they would like to do is cuddle up with a laptop and watch Netflix and basically hide from everything that they should be doing. The use of SpongeBob also contributes to the idea of college students reverting back to their immature and childish ways. 

The image essay is directed towards freshman, because, as classes have gotten into full swing countless first year students are coming to the same realization as the one in the visual essay. Even though it is more specifically directed to freshman, a college student or alumni of any age could enjoy this essay, as they could all relate and reminisce on their college days. 

The design of the visual essay is a string of pictures in chronological order. The effect of this design is to create something that looks like a comic, so that the readers know that it is meant to be read like a story. The choice of chronological order is used to show progression over time and the development of feelings that a college student has. This effect of this design is to make the essay make logical sense. If the essay were laid out another way, it may not make sense or convey the same meaning to the reader.

  