Great Steps of College

College and high school is two separate experiences. Originally, I assumed college was just a slightly more intense version of high school but I was wrong. In high school, I could easily receive an A or B grade in a class with minimal effort, but upon entering college, this assumption led me to doing poorly the first half of my first semester. By the time I caught up to this, it was too late to get the 4.00 I dreamed about.

In high school, there was plenty of work and tests a year so catching up was no problem, but in college, failing one assignment may determine whether you make an A in the class or not. There is a saying among high school students stating, “You will do fine as long as you show up to class and do the work” but apparently this rule is only true to high school classes. Amongst all the classes I have taken so far, I have came to notice that just showing up and doing the work has an extremely small effect on with how well you do in class. What is important is showing up to participate and doing well on the assignments.

In college, there are too few assignments given out, it is a big gamble to decide to miss one of the assignments. Also, the amount of information you need to build up in one semester is greater and more detailed than what you need to learn in high school. For example in high school bio, all we knew about the cells was that it was like many eggs which bonded to each other to form an organism, in college bio, we went into details such as how cells bond to each other and what cells are made of. High school barely scraped the surface of the topics that I have been learning in college.

I have recently begun to notice my lack of good sense in high school. I regret not trying my best to learn and follow the advice of the teachers that cared about my future. It was a shock to be faced with failure after taking my first step into the scholastic field. I feel the high school does not do enough to prepare students who aspires to go to college.