Yesterday, I was sitting in the car with my Dad when he asked, "Was college harder than you expected it to be?" My answer was yes, even though I fully expected it to be difficult. I don't think any high school can prepare you entirely for the adjustment that college is, and for how academically rigorous it can be.
Most classes are manageable. If you put in the work and spend hours studying, you will do fine. But the thing that was most frustrating for me during freshman year was that one class that, no matter how much I studied and tried, I still couldn't understand the material. I was not used to this feeling of frustration, for I had never experienced it in high school.
It seems as though a lot of my friends at college experienced a similar thing with a particular class. Maybe the professor didn't teach it well, maybe the structure of the class didn't fit our learning style, or maybe the material was just so foreign to us. Whatever the reason, this class was a nightmare.
It is a terrible feeling to sit in lecture and experience nothing but confusion. To go to tutoring and office hours and feel no improvement each week. But college has taught me that when a class seems impossible, and when you feel like you are going to fail it, to give it absolutely everything you have. Walking out of an exam and feeling like you bombed it feels way better when you know you couldn't have studied anymore for that exam.
Everyone has that one class that they wish they didn't take. It destroys your GPA for the semester. It brings you nothing but tears. But somehow, you still learn from it.
You may not have learned all of the material, but you still learned something. You learned new study habits. You learned how to step out of your comfort zone and get a tutor. You learned how to pull all-nighters studying at the library. And you learned how to be proud of a C+. In high school, a C would have seemed like a failing grade, but you know that you worked your butt off for that passing grade.
It was only year one, and we are all bound to experience classes that only get more and more challenging. It is important to remember that not everyone is capable of getting an A in every single class. we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes experiencing the weaknesses makes us stronger in the long run.
