What is college life like?
Most of my friends are currently high school seniors, waiting for their Early Decision letters or working on their Regular Decision applications. So they often ask me, a university student, what college life is like. Truth be told, I am only wrapping up my first semester, so I am still in the process of figuring it out. But here are some observations I have made:
1) Free time
The biggest change in transition to college life is freedom. For most people, this comes from the fact that they are not living with their parents anymore. Having lived away from my family for a long time, however, I was rather accustomed to this kind of lifestyle. What really struck me the most was the amount of freedom we had with our schedule.
In high school, I was on a strict schedule. I had school from 8am to 3pm and extracurricular activities from 4pm to 6pm. After that, I ate dinner and then went to my dorm room to work until 11pm, just in time for lights out. Even in a non-boarding school environment, high school requires students to be there for the entire day. But college is not like that at all. Most people only have 3-4 hours of classes every day. That is honestly nothing in comparison to 8 to 3 high school hours.
Having fewer hours of lectures, however, does not make college life easier. In fact, I think it is harder because now, you have to take the responsibility of managing your time effectively. People neither forces you to do things nor cares about whether or not you do them. You can spend your free time watching Netflix, hanging out with your friends, going to the gym, or working on your homework. The choice is entirely up to you, but you better own up to the consequences.
2) What's next?
In high school, what motivated me was to get accepted to a great university, which I have accomplished in n my opinion. There was this concrete goal in mind that pushed me to get As, volunteer, be involved in different student groups, and be a good sport in general. But now that I am in college, what's next? Joining a company? Getting married? Starting a business? Master's Degree?
Although it is my first semester here and I am yet to declare my major, I cannot help but to think about my future career. About where I will live. About whether I want to study after university. About when is the good time to fulfill my mandatory military duty. About what skills I should start developing for my CV. All the sudden, I am bombarded with all these concerns that are too significant for an 18 year-old to decide.
But I think this is what college is about: preparing me to face "the real world." It is teaching me to slowly start planning my life and think about the choices I make that could potentially change my future. Hopefully, by the end of my college career, I know the answer to the question "What's next?"
3) Friends outside the classroom
In high school, people take more or less the same classes. So for me, time I spent in class was equivalent to time I spent with my friends. By going to class, I saw them every day, so I never had to put in the effort to hang out with them.
In college, however, people take classes that are specialized in the areas they are interested in, so most of my friends and I are not in any of the classes together. This means that I need to spend my free time catching up with them. Going back to what I said earlier about free time, I need to decide every day how I am going to spend time: hanging out with friends that I have not seen for a while or working on a group project and alike.
This difference is something I never even thought about. Now, I have to make extra efforts to keep in touch with everyone. This can get quite overwhelming at times, at least for me, but I got to truly appreciate those who also put in the time to spend time with me.
These are the main differences I noticed between my experience in high school and in college. I am sure that I will discover more throughout the next four years, but hopefully by then, I have developed a few know-hows to the concerns I raise up in this post.