TEEN CENTER :: COLLEGE CENTER

FRESHMAN JOURNAL: DECEMBER 21, 2005
Too Bad

By Julia Choe

With finals season upon most college campuses, I've come to realize that despite what many people seem to think, college isn't just about parties and meeting new people. At some point, everyone has to sit down and spend some quality time with the books. This work has become completely different since high school graduation. It is no longer sufficient just to complete a worksheet and fill in some mindless memorization homework. For those people who envision their lives becoming incredibly relaxing after they finish their SAT prep and college application, I have bad news. College…is… hard.

There is a fairly rough transition from most high schools (including mine) into college. In high school, there's a greater sense of responsibility for the school and the teachers to make sure that the class understands. If a concept is difficult, it is not so hard to go back, do some review, and answer everyone's questions. In college, if a person doesn't understand a concept, then it's just too bad. With so many students, if you happen to be the one person who can't grasp a certain topic, you had better work it out yourself, because the class is going on with full speed. In that sense, there is a much greater amount of individual responsibility. Instead of six or so hours of class a day, a person's schedule can be as light as an hour and half a day. So with all that extra time, then, it seems that college academics should be much easier than high school. But that is definitely not the case. When not in class, one is expected to be studying the material and reading pages and pages of academic text. This flexibility can be liberating for some people. For those that relied on teachers or parents to set academic schedules for them, however, the first few months of college can be disastrous. Without having specific times to do work, it is all too easy to put off work until ten o'clock…then eleven o'clock…then four AM, when the class is just a few hours away. Writing long papers, especially, seems to be conducive to all-nighters in the 24-hour library. While I've never been one for working throughout the night and the next morning, it is not unusual to talk to people who have a paper due the next morning that has not yet been started. Some can't handle the panic that sets in after six hours of furious typing, while others thrive under the time-induced pressure. To each his own, I guess. The freedom of being able to work as one pleases can be a blessing or a curse, but in the end, it seems like everyone eventually figures out how to do work while simultaneously not missing out on the fun of other college activities.

Given the relatively more difficult nature of college, there are two ways to approach the increase in work. One is to pick the easiest classes with the least amount of tests, scrape by with the minimal readings, and hope that the professor won't notice that the final paper's ink is smeared from its printing ten minutes before class. The other is to devour learning--to read with highlighters and notebooks handy, sit near the front, and spend hours in the library poring over the most minuscule details of each textbook. Admittedly, most people fall in between these two extremes. But either one is equally possible. Education, like all else, is what each person makes of it. There is no supervisor urging each college student to do his or her best or to avoid excessive procrastination. The way that a person studies in college is interesting in the way that it reflects a person's personality. In contrast to the regularized methods of learning in high school, it becomes each person's prerogative to learn as he or she sees fit--whether that person chooses the best way is not the business of anyone else. In this sense, learning in college cannot be classified, since it is so dependent on each student's tastes.

For a high school student, college can seem exciting and somewhat intimidating. I would only suggest for people to not make college work into something that it's not. The work is not insignificant, nor is it completely overwhelming. It is exactly what one chooses to make of it. And since class choices are so numerous, there is little excuse for being unhappy in every class. Instead of seeing school as a burden, it really should be seen as way for a person to choose his or her own style of learning (and sleep). In looking ahead towards college, instead of asking "What do people learn in college?" a better question would be--"What do I want to learn?" The answer, of course, is different for each person, but it is a question that every college student must answer at some point during their first year on campus.