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How does going to college transform the life of a young person? As it turns out, it’s not just one continuous party with pauses for classes and assignments, this short film shows.

Emery Bergmann, who is a first year student at Cornell University, USA, used an assignment for a digital media class to talk about her transition into college life. The assignment was to depict a “transformation”, and she chose to centre it around the theme of the loneliness and separation that she experienced when she joined college.

“I feel more like a planet in a solar system,” the narrator laments. Somehow, everyone else seems to be having a good time. And then comes the business of finding new friends, but that’s never easy. “Just because people have similar interests doesn’t really mean that they’ll get along.”

The truth, though, is that everyone else also feels lonely, dejected and disappointed at some time. Bergmann makes the point that knowing that everyone’s together in their sadness does help. “I knew I would only enjoy making the video if the subject I was showing was something I had strong feelings about,” she said.