As my sophomore year in college nears the end, I can't help but to look back at my high school years. College is a lot different than what all my teachers tried to tell me. Apparently I'm not the only one whose experienced this difference.
Below I have compiled a list of "what my high school teachers said would happen in college vs. what actually happened" moments. Hope you enjoy!
1. On Class Start / Release Times
In high school, I remember being told by most of my teachers that whatever time a course is scheduled for in college, is the time the class starts and we are expected to be in our seats 15 mins early.
My freshman year of college, I decided it would be a good idea to take an 8am philosophy class (please don't ask me why) and needless to say that after a month or so, getting to class 15 mins early was near impossible. I walk into class one morning a few minutes late and sit down for literally five minutes before our teacher lets us go. We went to class just so our professor could hand us back our exams and that was it.
Spring semester of that same year, I had a teacher that let us out of class 20 mins early because it was such a nice day out that she didn't want us to "miss out on the good weather."
2. On Grades
I remember hearing this from one of my English teachers back in high school. I remembered it because I got really scared about going to college afterwards. I thought that my whole college career would depend on whether or not I failed one test. Needless to say, it's not true.
In one of my first literature classes at college, my professor would give daily mini quizzes on our reading assignments for the sole purpose of making sure one exam didn't fail us. If only all teachers were like that.
3. On Missing Classes
While I didn't hear this from any of my teachers, I'm pretty sure I heard something similar from my parents. I was told that missing one class would be the equivalent of missing two weeks worth of class and two weeks worth of work.
Every professor I've had in college has given three days of unexcused absences and have either emailed the work I missed to me or put it in the syllabus. That way, in case anyone in the class did miss a day, we wouldn't fall behind on the work.
4. On Reminders
This was probably what I heard the most throughout high school. Everyone would always push the importance of planners and organization because they said we would be adults and were expected to handle things on our own. Let's be honest though, even with planners, adults can't be expected to remember everything. Everyone needs a reminder every now and then and thankfully most professors in college are very good about reminding the class when due dates are.
5. On MLA Formatting
Thankfully, this last one couldn't be anymore true. MLA is perhaps the most inconvenient formatting to use for a paper. None of the professors that I've ever had have wanted us to write using MLA. Also, plagiarism really isn't as much of a problem as high school teachers make it out to be (at least from what I can tell). In my experience, a lot of the books and reading assignments I've had aren't even available on SparkNotes so it's not like I could plagiarize even if I wanted to.
All in all, I think it's safe to say that while college is a lot of hard work, it's not nearly as strict or scary as high school staff around the country seem to make it.
