Many think that what is hard about college is living in dorms, or the difficult classes or meeting new people. And those things are hard. But those are not the biggest things, the biggest difficulty about college is all the things you no longer do that you did in High School.
What makes High School easy and college hard is routine. When you entered high school after middle school, the routine didn’t change. You still woke up at home, went to school, went from class to class, had lunch, finished up with classes and then maybe had an extra curricular activity. Your parents made food for you, you did homework, went to bed and then on the weekend, you might hang out with your friends. Entering college completely changes this.
If you live at home, your routine will change but not as much as living on your own or on campus, but there will still be big changes.
First, college has no start and end time for classes. You may have a morning class or you won’t. You might have a class following he first or you wont. You might have 10 minutes to get to class or you might have a break of three or four. You might have classes five times a week or two or three. And this will change every quarter or semester depending on the college.
This lack of routine can be very disorienting for those who depend on a routine but didn’t know it because of the one imposed on them in High School. The difficulty of keeping track of class, homework, exams will be a large chore. It will be an even larger chore if you live on your own or with roommates or in a dorm.
When you were home, your parents watched you and so there was no running out on Tuesday with friends for donuts. Now it’s every Tuesday and Thursday and Monday is laser tag. There is always someone with easier classes or a slacker who wants to rope you into not studying. There’s always a party or an event. On a campus with thousands of studentes and hundreds of clubs, it is easy to get roped in for an over achiever into the extracurriculars. The problem is that the college classes are far more difficult but the don’t seem like it.
You will go to lecture and think you get it. You will read the book and think you get it. But then you will write the essay or see the exam and you will realize, that you did not get it.
The difference between high school and college is not amount of work, but the level at which you are expected to execute it. And that level is dependent on the hardest working, smartest and best prepared student in the class. You won’t know the student or know how hard they work, but you will know how you stack against them come Midterm or Final when you get a C or worse.
The problem is that you skipped a few lectures and a few lectures in a class that meets twice a week is ten or more percent of the class. You are trying to catch up but you can’t because you have other classes to catch up in. So what do you do? You drop the course so you can focus on the others. Now you have to retake that class and you are on probabation.
This is a story all too many college students have seen. Many of them are actually undiagnosed ADHD or Bipolar or Depressed which is even more expressed when in college. The symptoms can get exacerbated if you are no longer participating in sports, eat poorly and sleep poorly because you are chasing boys or girls, or procrastinating with video games or social media.
So what do you do!??
Well, you plan for it.
There are chapters on studying and doing well in this book. But in essence, it is important to remember what made you successful in High School and then increase that ten fold. You sleep well and eat well. You plan out your quarter. You make lists of things you have to do and put them in a planner. You look at the readings and divide them by day so you don’t get behind and you join study groups to stay on top of classes like math and science.
When you get behind, you go to the professor and TA and get office hours, even if it costs you embarrassment. Embarrassment in office hours is much more acceptable than retaking the class.
You also make sure to work out, have consistent routines and if you feel like you are having trouble or overwhelmed, you see a school counsilor or psychologist. You confide in friends, you talk to your parents and siblings, you keep your community and rely on them.
College is difficult because it knocks you into a completely new routine without a routine, it adds more work, robs you of community and adds a ton of distractions. But it doesn’t have to, not if you’re prepared.
seven year degree 