Each year high school seniors find themselves flying the coop and heading off to schools all over the country, of all different sizes. Some find themselves on campuses with only a couple of hundred students, while others find themselves wandering around as just one of the fifty something, thousand students that embody the campus. But despite the size of the campus that you now find yourself on, you can’t help but compare it to what you were used to, high school. While some graduate high school with a close to 800 classmates, an addition of only a couple more is nothing to them, others find themselves leaving a class of 50 to enter into a lecture hall of 150. And for me leaving a class of 77 and entering a school of 1,200 was a huge jump but one I couldn’t be happier I made.

Yes, small high schools have their disadvantages, news travels fast, you know just about everyone, and after four years you might get sick of seeing your classmates day in and day out. But some of these disadvantages can also be advantages. A small school allows for opportunities a big school may not offer in sports, academic programs, musicals, and a chance for you to stand out and be a big fish in a small pond for just a short while. Small high schools allow for an overall close-knit community that a big school may be lacking, but when you leave that small beloved school, you may find yourself on a campus that has more than ten times the amount of kids in your class, and you begin to learn and experience things you never did before.

You learn that people are different. There’s a series of different beliefs, traditions, cultures and personalities out there that you didn’t even see the slightest bit of in your tiny high school, but you find yourself intrigued by your new findings. Those 50-something cookie cutter people that you found in your small private school is something that is far off in the distance because each and every person you encounter in college has something new and different to bring to the table. Each coming from a different town, whether a bustling city, a farm, or a quaint little suburb, and each with a new way of life and challenging what you’ve always known.

They say college is a time for your beliefs and perspective to be challenged, and if you find yourself as having come from the one of these cookie cutter schools, this becomes an even greater opportunity for this to happen. So for those of you, like I did, who came from small private schools and have found yourself in a new environment with great new opportunities and views, take the time to have your views and beliefs challenged and learn from these new people.