The People

One of the worst things about high school is that there are a lot of mean, misbehaved, and self-absorbed people there. There is also a lot of bullying and drama and cliques and many people find it difficult to fit in. Also if you're shy and don't make a serious effort to put yourself out there high school could be very lonely. In college I feel that this is not the case. In college everyone is more mature so almost no bullying and drama occurs. I also see the university environment as a much more open and accepting one that champions diversity and inclusion. A college campus feels like a community and a family and you will always find a group of people who share your interests. Through an entire semester at Villanova I haven't witnessed a mean person yet. In fact nearly everyone at Villanova is super friendly and I felt right at home from day one. Surely there are nice people in high school but college gives a much better opportunity to make life-long friends.

Your Schedule

Now in college when I think about my high school days I ask myself how was I able to survive a high school schedule without totally burning out. In high school you have 7 classes, 5 days a week, all on top of each other, 6 to 7 hours straight of school and then 30 minutes to an hour or maybe even 2 hours of homework from each class on top of it. You barely have any time to yourself in high school. However in college you instead take 4-6 classes, each class most of the time is 2 or 3 days a week instead of 5, you could have large breaks in between your classes also, and you also have plenty of time to do your assignments. I did some calculations and in senior year of high school I spent about 31 hours and 10 minutes a week in class (I did have two lunch periods however so without lunch it was 24 hours and 20 minutes of class only) whereas in my first semester in college I spent only 12 hours and 30 minutes in class which is nearly half the time spent in class in high school. Although the work is harder, with this much time you aren't under the wire as much.

Socialization & Activities

At some point in your youth I'm sure you wished that you could live with your best friend or hang out with them every day without always being under the constant surveillance of adults and college pretty much gives you those freedoms within reason of course. You could room with your best bud from high school, spend weekend nights out with your friends, chill in your rooms together, stay up late, it's like your childhood dreams come true. There are also clubs for pretty much any interest and from my experiences sometimes certain clubs go to sports games, retreats, and have formals. You have so much more opportunity to meet people, make friends, and enjoy each other's company which is much harder in high school's rigid scheduling.

Choice

In college you can finally make choices for yourself. In college you finally have the freedom to pick all of your classes, professors, and meeting times. You get to choose the field of study that you want to major in and this could of course be something you love. Of course like high school there are required classes but it is much more flexible in college. Hate history? Well you don't have to take it ever semester like in high school maybe in college you will only have to take it one semester to fulfill your core requirement. When you start your classes and realize there is a class you can't handle you can drop it and add another class within the first week. If there is a class that you think you're gonna fail you can WX it and it wont affect your GPA. Unlike high school there is so much choice in college where you aren't doomed to power through certain classes in my high school we were forced to take AP world and AP US and were strongly encouraged to take more AP classes.

Classes

Although college classes can be pretty challenging and can sometimes push you to your absolute limit, the classes college offers are superior to that of high school. I feel like as you go through school the classes get more in depth and specific instead of these huge broad subjects. In middle school all I had was math, science, English, and social studies. In high school it gets a little less broad like World History, Chemistry, Algebra. But in college there are many classes that delve in deeper to these topics. When I took psychology in high school I found the units on childhood development and disorders very interesting but we couldn't spend too much time on it because we had so much more material to cover on other topics. But college offers entire courses on specific topics such as those and thus the classes are more interesting and you get to learn a particular topic in depth instead of learning the bare minimum from a smorgasbord of topics. Like I mentioned you get to major in your favorite field of study and be enriched with knowledge on that topic. Also you have much less assignments too. In high school you would get a test on ever chapter and homework ever night for every class but in college you could get like 2 or 3 tests or papers. They're of course more content heavy but you have so much more time to complete everything.