Perhaps one of modern life’s most shocking lifestyle changes commonly takes place during the transition from high school to undergraduate college. The period of time in which that transition occurs defines a child’s transformation into an adult. Just kidding. Adulthood is still a ways away from the college life. College kids in my mind fall under their own category; there really seems to be no other phase of life that seems to be quite like the college experience. Given that I have partaken in this experience for only one semester thus far, the greatest development that seems to result from this process is independence. Many may not fully develop the ability to live completely independently in the first few years (I most probably will not), but independence and individuality of thought is as emphasized as GPA or extracurricular activities ever were in high school.
Not long after the euphoria of being done with the college application process and the completion of the first semester of senior year, high school begins to feel like a drag and many students realize for the first time just how drained they are from school. Motivation to continue to excel in academics falls drastically and the majority of students see at least some degree of regression in their scores and grades. The focus shifts from trying to ace every exam and maxing out your GPA to instead doing the bare minimum to graduate at a decent standing. The first month or so after acceptances are released is especially bad; I had a few straight-A friends who dropped to a B- or lower in some of their classes during the third quarter.
All that sounds horrible, but most people tend to find a balance after a while. Right after the college acceptance phase, it feels like high school is coming to an end and life will improve infinitely once summer and then college rolls around. After a few weeks, you realize just how far away it all still is. It may only be a semester before you’re free from the hell of high school, but a semester is still four to five months of work. For me personally, that last semester was just as stressful as previous ones, but for a different reason: it almost didn’t seem worth it. All the hard work I had put into the last 3.5 years had finally paid off, so why did I have to work another half a year to graduate and move on? I wanted to be done now.
Needless to say I had to suck it up and grind out the rest of the school year like everyone else, and even ended up doing pretty well. After graduation came hands down the most relaxing summer since the start of high school. There are two times where you can and should spend the summer break doing nothing but relax: right after high school and right after undergraduate college. These are when responsibilities fall to a rare minimum for a very lengthy two to three months. If you do not take advantage of these two phases, you will find that such opportunities to lay back and de-stress will be few and far between later on.
The summer after high school especially is unique in that it is laden with innocent and relentless anticipation for the start of a new life phase. There have been few other summers where I have had something to look forward to at the end of the vacation. I was so eager that I signed up for a pre-orientation program that started a full week before the start of freshman orientation. The Third World Transition Program. And so I left home early, more excited than I had ever been before to move out of the house and live (at least partially) on my own. As it turns out, I didn’t even like the pre-orientation program all that much. It was disorganized and poorly run, and so I spent the first couple days exploring campus with a few newly made friends. I had a couple of sleepovers in the basement of my beautiful new dorm. We went out and tried some of the many available restaurants on the main campus street. That couple of days were unbelievably satisfying; and also wholly unrepresentative of what was to come.
Once actual orientation started, the number of students on campus visibly multiplied. Each day approximately fifty to a hundred “hi, nice to meet you” greetings had to be exchanged, to the point where faces and names became a blur. But apart from the overwhelming number of new peers, orientation turned out to be probably the most festive event I’ll experience on campus in my four years at school. Anything from ice cream socials to workshops led by professors on topics of acceptance and morality was tailored to maximize the amount of socializing and peer-to-peer bonding. Not to mention orientation is probably one of the few times where nearly everyone is in a social mood, so everywhere you looked there would be eye contact and smiles abound.
But sooner or later, reality has to set in. Classes are at first exciting. After all, college is a higher form of education, right? The professors should be leagues better than high school teachers, the topics should be infinitely more interesting, and the coursework should bring out each student’s full hidden potential. These were all misconceptions that I so very wanted to believe in, and did believe in those first few days of classes. As a result, I absolutely loved every single one of the classes I shopped, and ended up taking all of them. Among these were an anthropology class and an introductory computer science class. Both of these I would despise by the middle of the semester. Computer science especially proved to be the bane of my academic career. I poured anywhere from 20 to over 30 hours a week in the computer lab, coding and debugging programs that I had no idea how to compile. Ultimately, I had to drop the course halfway through the semester because I simply could not figure out how to code the final few projects. Just a small amount of misjudgment set me back so many hours in front of a computer screen, mind boggled and self-esteem completely crushed. So common is the call to step outside one’s comfort zone, to explore classes which one would not have thought to explore in earlier years. I so eagerly jumped on that bandwagon, trusting that no matter how uncomfortable I would be in a subject area I could pull through simply by virtue of my being a college student. It was easy to be an incoming freshman and say, “I want to take this class and that class, and dive into that subject and master that field of study.” Everything is so easy to plan out, but much less so to carry out. Classes at the end of the day are still the same old, frustrating, time-consuming, sometimes boring classes that they have always been.
The single biggest difference between being in college and not is the pure freedom to do what you want, when you want. That is what I had to get used to, and that is ultimately what I love most about being at school. It requires a re-evaluation of priorities and lifestyle. Independence. Being at home has never been unpleasant, per se, but regardless of how much freedom my parents gave me I had to realize that I was always abiding by their rules. Whatever they had to say, I had an obligation to listen and to respect. Not that I ever resented that fact, but the lifting of that form of willing familial subjugation in college made me feel more like my own person.
This sudden increase in freedom results in a number of things. The first few weeks of school is all excitement and fun. Parties are the places to be on the weekends (and many weekdays too), and the majority of students experience the night life to some degree. Bedtimes almost universally are pushed back 2-5 hours for the sake of parties or late night hangouts with newfound friends. Alcohol is abundant and although the university and parents would like to believe otherwise, a high majority of students end up at least lightly drinking during each late night outing. Even kids who during high school never indulged in the party scene and never even dreamed about consuming alcohol fall victim to the trend. But this phase doesn’t last long. After about two to three weeks the parties get to be old and repetitive and alcohol becomes a little less appealing to many. Sooner or later a more mundane weekly routine sets in, with daily visits to the library to catch up on homework and weekly shifts at the gym to stay in shape becoming the norm.
In short, college is itself a phase of transition to adulthood. Many people speak of the transition being between education levels, focusing on the differences between high school and college. But as writer David Foster Wallace once said, “a real world-class education isn’t really about knowledge; it’s about learning how to think.” In college I am first and foremost leaning how to think for myself and how to live outside the safety and comfort of home. Thus is college really just a gateway, to better opportunities and fulfillment in the years ahead.