“Take AP classes!”
“Save money on college!”
“You’ll graduate faster!”
You’ve heard this from guidance counselors and teachers alike. They sell earning college-credit in high school like its the best thing ever, and it sounds good in theory, but once you get to college, you realize those 12 hours of transferable credit aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
So you like the idea of getting done with you Gen Ed’s early so you can get into your major as quickly as possible, and I can totally see the appeal. But what you don’t realize about starting school with almost all of your Gen Ed’s finished is that you’re going to start school as a sophomore, and that’s probably something you’re prepared for.
College classes are hard. No matter how many AP classes you take in high school or how smart you are, college courses are challenging. Gen Ed classes — real ones, taught by professors; not dual credit classes the Mrs. Jones taught between English I and English II — are great because they help you transition from a high school course load to a college one.
Your AP class might have been difficult, but it is a completely different animal than a college class. If you’ve been 4.0 GPA Honors students for all of high school, taking a 100 level Arts and Humanities probably sounds so easy it’s boring. “It’s an entry-level class. I took AP all four years! It’ll bore me.”
No, it won't.
That freshman level 101 course you’re shrugging off is just as hard, if not harder than your AP IV class. That means that your 200+ level course is more than likely going to be way more challenging than anything you’ve ever taken before, and you might not be prepared for that if you skip out on taking Gen Ed’s in college.
The reason for Gen Ed’s is to help you get acclimated to difficult university courses. Do yourself a favor and take the chance to familiarize yourself with expectations of professors and what’s expected in the university lecture hall.
Also, you probably will change your mind a few times about what you want to do with your life. The beauty of spending the first year or so taking 100 level course across a wide variety of subjects is that they introduce you to classes or career paths you otherwise never would have realized you were interested in, and it gives you time to change your mind.
If you start school and have no Gen Ed’s to take, you’re going to quickly find yourself in a position where you have no classes left to take except ones that go toward a major for a career you decided on while you were a young and foolish high schooler.
But now that you’re a grown up and have spent the last year studying for the career you picked as a 15-year-old, you might not be as thrilled with the career path you picked before you knew any better.
Give yourself time to experiment and learn about all your possibilities. It’s a normal and beautiful thing to change your mind and adjust your sails to reach your goal. Don’t rob yourself of this opportunity.
