Dear Freshman,

I am not extremely experienced at college yet considering I've only been going a week now but I am past high school. My mom was talking to me the other day about how great college is compared to high school and she gave me this little piece of advice, "High school is your reward for making it through middle school and college is the reward for making it through high school." This past week I have seen that come true. My teachers are so amazing. This past week I have learned that being a college freshman isn't as bad as being a high school freshman.

In high school we are taught to never challenge our teachers. If they say something you don't agree with, then you have to keep it to yourself. But in college, if a teacher says something you don't think is right, then you raise your hand and challenge that subject in a respectful way.

And the people around you are so different. In college, your peers don't disrupt you. They honestly couldn't care less what you're doing because nobody is being forced to be there. We are forced to be at school until they hand us the piece of freedom in the form of a paper with your name on it but because everyone is paying to be at the college, nobody really cares about who is around them making noise. By then we are all professionals at tuning everything around us out because it was just the way it was in high school.

High school teachers are honestly just glorified babysitters. They are paid to sit around and watch us make fools of our selves and they call it "learning". Now some actually do some good for us but what about the others? My number one complaint for high school is the fact that they expect us to act like adults but they treat us like children.

You will not have a majority of the friends you have now when you graduate. High school changes people and we find out who our real friends are. It'll be messy but why would you wanna keep a friend through the hardest years of your life so far if they are only bringing you down? You don't. So pay attention.

I'm getting a tiny bit off track here but to those high school freshman out there, you can do this. You make it through these next years and you will be given the opportunity to become the person your elementary school teachers saw in you. You make it through these next few years and you will prove to every single person who said you couldn't that you can. Life may seem hard and useless and it may make you feel like you cant, but you can. I may not know you personally or at all but the thing I could've used during every single day of those wretched four years of my life is just something simple. You are not what your teachers say you are. You are not a reject or a drop out. You are not useless or not worth it. You are worth teaching. You are smart and capable and you are worth more than you think you are. I promise you that.

Sincerely,

A girl who knows.