This past week marked a lot of "firsts" in my life; my first time living away from my parents, my first college class, and, of course, my first consent workshop.

Before starting at George Washington University, I received an email about completing an online course about sexual assault followed with a link to sign up for a mandatory, in-person workshop on consent and sexual violence on college campuses. Previously, we had discussed sexual harassment at orientation and the resources on campus to combat this with our orientation student leaders -- an open, honest conversation about consent.

And, while I was grateful that college campuses are making an effort to prevent sexual violence and help victims, it made me indescribably frustrated that in my four years of high school, this was my first school-mandated discussion on these topics.

Without formally addressing consent on high school campuses, college sex-ed crash courses cannot effectively prevent sexual violence on university campuses; instead, they can mainly just provide resources to students who have been affected by sexual abuse. It's essential that these resources are made known to students, but if these issues were introduced at the high school level, we could prevent these horrific incidents from occurring in the first place.

The average American teenager begins engaging in sexual intercourse at age 17, during their high school years. Therefore, excluding a sexual-education curriculum from high schools allows for teenagers to engage in potentially abusive sexual relationships well before college.

Unfortunately, only 24 states in the United States require sex education to be a part of public, high school curriculums. In my own high school, the school board maintained such a conservative attitude about sex that an article of mine published in the online issue of my school's newspaper about the necessity of sexual education in schools was pulled from the website in a matter of hours after publication because it insinuated that teenagers, shockingly, have sex.

Yes, teenagers have sex. And no, sexual assault is not unique to college campuses. I'm glad that we've started an open dialogue about sexual harassment at universities, but we need to start talking sooner.