My transition from high school to college was not like most people's. It seemed as if everything I knew and was used to would be shaken by what most other people in my shoes would call normal. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the transition from high school to college is tough for everyone, but I had a few extra reasons to be worried.
I went to a private school for high school. This school wasn't like a Catholic school filled with slutty girls in plaid skirts (although we did have hideous, long plaid skirts), nor was it like the private school you would see the Woodsens and Waldorfs catting around in "Gossip Girl." This school was a three-room church school, meaning the school was in a church. It was K-12, so one room held kindergartners, one room held first through seventh graders, and the third room held eighth graders all the way up to seniors. I had three teachers at the most in one year.
The only way it worked to have seven different grades in one room was because all of our "classes" were actually little booklet-type things called PACEs, seeing that they use the ACE curriculum. I stayed in the one room and worked on the subjects I had whenever I wanted. I got to work at my own pace, but I also set goals for how many pages I wanted to accomplish each day to keep me on track. The work I didn't do was my homework for the day. If I had a question, I would raise a flag in my little cubicle with blinders on each side. I scored my own work after partially teaching myself how to do it. The school didn't have the extracurricular activities that all other high schools had. I had two in my graduating class. TWO! The kicker is that the other graduate was my sister.
I walked into college with a skewed view of what it was going to be like, but I know what it's really like thanks to two years of experience so far. The differences between my private school and college were pretty obvious: I was not used to lectures in the classroom; I was not used to seeing a human standing in front of me teaching me things. I was not used to having similar age groups in the classroom. I was not used to the loud conversations going on in the classroom, nor was I used to my neighbors being able to look right at me. I was especially not used to the freedom to wear whatever I wanted to class. (No, I haven't worn pajamas to class yet.) I was not used to having so many options for other activities to do at school.
Now, you can see my concern for jumping into a school that was completely different from anything I was used to. How many public school students can say that they had to deal with this many differences in the transition from high school to college? Though there were positives and some negatives with switching from my private school to college, I think I handled it quite well. It has definitely been a learning experience.
