Since I already discussed the social aspect of college, it's now time to discuss the grueling part. Class is not only that, but it's also fun, educational(obviously) and transformative. People hype up college to be this harsh testing grounds where only the smartest can survive. And while I do feel like that sometimes, I can safely say that class is not as scary as people tell.
First of all, high school for me was incredibly easy. I'm talking about do nothing in class and still be able to pass easy. That's public school education for you, and because of that I thought I would be on top of my game for college. Turns out it was quite the opposite. I was astonished by the amount of work that was to come to me on my first day. For those who don't know, on the first day of class professors hand out a syllabus that details what is going to happen in class this semester. That includes all the lectures, tests, quizzes, projects and exams. This definitely shocked me since I thought we would just introduce ourselves, like high school. Come to find out I'm basically signing a contract agreeing I will do all of this work under these conditions. It was surprising at first, demoralizing the second time, and kept getting depressing since then. It took me a week to get over that. That's when I started enjoying my classes.
College classes have proven to be far more interesting than my high school classes. For one, they actually provoke thought from me. Two of the classes I had my first semester were discussion based. We would talk about the assigned reading material given to us before class. I just realized how boring that might sound when I just wrote that but these were the classes that kept me awake. I was able to see other people’s thoughts on the reading and was able to interact with the class. Oddly enough, I liked some of the assignments I had to do as well. For my philosophy class, I had to mediate five times and write about my experience of it. It was a relieving experience, especially amongst all the stress, and now I still do it occasionally. Lastly, the freedom that you have with your schedule allows you to sign up for really fun classes, especially if you’re a freshman. There are a lot of out-there classes for freshman seminars like ones about Star Trek, The Twilight Zone even about Telling Time. I took the latter and I know it’s not the most thrilling sounding class but it was my favorite class that semester. I have to thank my professor for that; without him it would have been so boring. Even though I enjoyed some of my time in class, the rest of it I was not looking forward to.
My absolute all-time biggest problem when it came to school was procrastination. It is the devil, but you never know that until you have to write a report a hour before it is due. It seems very stupid now to think I could have just done that paper right when I got it but at the time, it seemed like I had everything under control. I wish I could say I got out of that habit fast but it took me a year, some failed assignments, and a lot of talks to get it in my head that procrastination is bad. Because of this, I became my worst enemy in college. It wasn’t anyone else nor an outside force out of my control. It was because I lacked all self-control that college became stressful for me. To any victim of procrastination out there, please, don’t be an idiot like me. Do your work before anything else.
Classes can be stressful. If you have a joy in learning and a want to acquire more knowledge then that’s will get you through the tough times. Remember, college is not all about learning. It is about the experiences you make. So have some fun in-between your study sessions.
