Every year around May and June, high schools and colleges let their students out for the summer. Of course everyone is so excited to not have classes anymore, and to be able to go on vacation and to get back that tan that has faded over those cold winter months. Though it may not seem like it, reaching the end of the year in college is very different than in high school, and although it is still a happy time of year, sometimes the end of a college year can be a little less happy than when you were in high school.
1. Seniors
In college, it is a lot easier to be friends across grades than in most high schools. One of the first classes I took as a Freshman in college was an upper level class, and I was able to actually become friends with some seniors and juniors in that class. In high school it sometimes is not that easy. This means, that at the end of the year, when graduation is approaching, you are going to know a lot more seniors who are leaving than you may in high school. Whether they be your sorority sister, your neighbor in your residence hall, or your study buddy for English class, its like that you are going to feel more connected to the seniors at your college than when you were in high school, and that means graduation is a little bit more emotional for you because you are saying goodbye to more people.
2. Uncertainty
When you leave college for the summer, there is a kind of uncertainty about what you will return to in the Fall. Specifically, who will return. When you are in college, over the summer it is not unlikely for people to decide to drop out or transfer schools on a whim. This means that when you say goodbye to all your friend before you leave for the summer, you never know who may not be returning to school in a few months.
3. Stress
Over the summer, college still stresses you out. Whether its because you have to work on your resume for the internship you're applying to for the fall, or having to re register for classes because your schedule got messed up, or whether you have to register for housing because you got the short end of the stick and have to choose housing last. From about the last week of March, through April and May, college students loves are full of stress. In high school you basically have to take finals (and maybe not even a final for every class) and tell someone what classes you want to be in. In college, Finals are death and class and housing registration are like a small scale version of the hunger games. So the end of the year in college goes side by side with major stress.
4. Money
For high school, the end of the year means you may be working over the summer to get a little bit of extra spending money, or not. In college, you work your ass off all summer to make the money that you are going to live off of from August to May. The money you make in the summer becomes a lot more serious when you get to college because it is actually being used for living expenses, and not just so you can go to the movies with your friends once a week.
There are always the obvious differences between high school and college, but these differences are the ones that aren't usually thought of. College is a whole new world after high school, one that takes a while to fully understand, and these differences are some that you yourself may never feel, but they are real for so many people.
