The overall meaning of this image essay is to show a freshman’s idea of what college will be like versus how he/she feels when classes start. 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 he/she is 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 just generally sucks from time to time. If society looks to movies as a reference to what college is and a symbolic outside look, it would display a bunch of kids doing immature stuff and not really caring about anything. In real college, most kids are working hard to keep up his/her grades and do well in all classes, many suffering “all-nighters” to get the work done.

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. Students anticipate parties and club meetings and making new friends, students excited to be away from Mom and Dad, and feel ready to be adults. Just like children, he/she is 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 an 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 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 to their immature and childish ways. SpongeBob is a child’s cartoon that most people would assume that college kids have grown out of watching, the show is filled with immature jokes and simple plots that don’t take much thinking to understand. By using SpongeBob in the image essay, it is symbolic to a college kid going back to watching the childish cartoon because it is comforting to just be immature when he/she should be working or studying.  

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. Even a high school student could possibly relate to this essay, when a freshman enters high school, he or she is excited to be there and they now think that they are on top of the world because they are no longer in middle school. However, as they go through high school they learn that the work gets harder and friendships also get harder and that high school is not all that they thought it would be. 

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 it were not in chronological order it would not fit the theme of the progression of college. A college student cannot come into college already stressed over work that has not yet been assigned, therefore the excitement must come first and the stress must come after for the essay to convey it’s meaning. If the essay were laid out another way, it may not make sense or convey the same meaning to the reader. 

In conclusion, the overall meaning of the image essay is to show the idea of what a freshman thinks college will be like versus how he/she begins to feel about college as classes have started. The image essay is a short story that is kind of like a comic, making it an easy and enjoyable read. The theme of the image essay is expectations versus reality. The expectations that a first-year college student has versus how the reality of college actually feels once he/she is settled in. 

  