One thing I remember vividly from high school, especially during my junior and senior years, is getting a lot of advice from my teachers about what college was going to be like. Before my freshman year of college, I had so many preconceived notions of what the “college experience” would entail – and I was so wrong about so many of them.
Sure, I got a lot of influences from books and movies with college settings, but for the most part?
I blame my teachers.
Hmph.
With that being said, here are the two major things high school got totally wrong about college:
- The (supposed) strictness of our professors
Listen, I’m almost 100% positive that every single one of you have had one of your high school teachers stand in front of the class – usually after a moment of bad behavior from the students – and say this: “Y’all are almost adults now, about to head to college. And if you think your professors there are gonna let this stuff fly, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Sound familiar?
Yeah, well it turns out that one of the first things I learned upon coming to A&M my freshman year is that professors? They really don’t care about what you do.
Now, I don’t mean this in the sense that they don’t want to see you succeed. Most of them do, and they will try to help you do well in their classes. But if you’re on your phone, or if you skip your classes, or if you’re eating snacks? What’s it to them?
I’ve thought about why this is the case, actually, and I think I get. The way I see it, public high school is free, and it’s your teachers’ jobs to make sure you do well in your classes and discipline you at the same time.
But we pay to go to college. So as far as the professors are concerned, it’s up to us what we do with our money. We pay to take their classes, so if we don’t want to go one day or we’re not paying attention, that’s on us. That’s our choice, and it’s our responsibility to make sure we aren’t wasting those dollars.
So yeah, the professors in college are a LOT more relaxed than we were told in high school.
Surprise!
2. The workload
Okay, don’t get me wrong here. College is a lot of work, and it’s definitely a major source of stress for students anywhere.
But the way that we get to work in college is totally different.
Let me explain.
In high school, our days were very structured. Seven to eight classes a day (or three to four classes alternating every other day, depending on what school you went to), and there was always homework do on set days at set times. No one chose what time classes started and ended for the most part, and so usually study schedules could be pretty fixed. Students didn’t have much of a say in the way their schedules were run, at least in comparison to college.
And that’s what I’m getting at.
In college, you get to make a personalized schedule. You choose how many classes you want to take per semester, how many semesters you want to take. You choose what you study, which professors you want, which extracurriculars seem fun for you. It’s all up to you.
High school had everyone taking, like I mentioned early, around seven or eight classes per day. As a junior in college, I don’t know how I even managed to survive that on the daily. I take four classes total this semester, only two per day, and that itself is more than enough for me.
Because what I had to learn the hard way is that the class scheduling may be lax, but no one is gonna be spoon-feeding you through the material.
Each of the four classes I’m taking as an engineering major are HARD. Big time. And the way that you study for college classes is completely left to you. Professors are not going to hold your hand, make you study guides, or walk you through exactly what you’ve got to do to prepare for the exams. It is solely YOUR responsibility to stay on top of all of your course materials and figure out how to study appropriately in order to finish off all your quizzes and exams.
In addition, most professors (at least in my experience) aren’t in the habit of handing out extra credit opportunities. I don’t mean that they won’t try to help you out where they can, but coming to college means that you are given newly oriented responsibilities and expected to handle them like an adult in the workforce would. Very different from high school, where they ultimately would still treat you like kids that they were getting ready for the adult world.
Figuring out how to time manage on my own, stay on top of lesson plans, and lead a moderately healthy lifestyle at the same time was a major challenge for me that no one told me about. When I first saw that I only had to take four or five classes per semester, and that they would be split up throughout the week, I was ecstatic. I remember thinking, Oh, that’s all? I could do eight in high school with no problem, this should be a piece of cake!
That was freshman me. Junior me would laugh at her. Don’t make my mistakes, guys.
So yeah, there you have it. To all high school teachers out there in the United States: pleeeeeease change up the advice you give us!
We can’t handle the whiplash.