High school and college differ in a lot of ways, but the biggest difference for me is the amount of freedom you have. In high school, almost every hour of my day was planned for me. Eight classes, each about forty-eight minutes long, four-minute passing periods. The doors to my high school locked at eight a.m., if you were more than five minutes late you would need to check in through the office and would be reprimanded if you were late more than three times. Skipping was strongly discouraged, and if you were caught leaving you would be punished. There were even teachers assigned lunch duty to make sure no fights broke out or that no one could wander the hallways during lunch. There was a designated teacher who would practically guard the entrance/exit to the cafeteria, making sure to check every student’s ID every time you came back after lunch if you left campus. High school was very strict compared to college.
College was a bit of a surprise, and it was almost jarring to know you can skip most classes with no repercussions. No one holds your hand here; everything is on your own. There are no teachers monitoring the exits or scolding you for being late or skipping. You can come and go as you please, and it’s definitely the biggest change I’ve noticed. Another difference that’s almost painful is the differing duration of classes. College classes can be the average fifty-five-minute class, or the insane three-hour long class. When I first saw my schedule, my eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw my biology lab was three hours long. All in all, college is nothing like high school, and whether that’s a good or bad thing can differ from person to person. It’s a big jump from high school to college, but we’re not little kids anymore. Taking responsibility for ourselves is important, and college is definitely a good place to practice being independent.
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