Graduating high school is a great accomplishment. You spent four years of your life waiting for this moment and now college is about to being. College is a great time to explore and find yourself and what you want to do with the rest of your life. But what comes next is an even greater one, college is a great experience but there are some things that I wish I knew before going.
All of the things that you stress about now will seem very small in college.
All of the homework or tests that you were stressed about in high school will seem like a joke in college. In college, you may only have a couple of classes a day but you have to realize all of the work that comes with the classes. In one day you might have homework for each class, most of a book to read, and a paper to write. The only way to get around this stress is by time management, this is one of the most important tools that you will use during college. Stress in college is very real and present, you just have to learn how to manage that stress and get rid of it in a healthy manner like exercising.
Finding new friends in a brand new atmosphere can be hard.
From now on you have to learn to make friends on your own and this is very hard to do when you just learning where things are at. But once you make one friend it is easy for more of them to come. Before you know it you'll have a group of friends each of which you are very close to.
Learning how to study is the worst.
In high school I rarely had to study, this led to my biggest problem in college. Studying is hard to do and even studying in college is even worse. Do not get discouraged by this, it is all a learning process from the first semester and you will eventually learn what works for you.
Leaving home will be harder than it seems.
As much as you say you hate home it will be harder to leave than you think. You have spent the past 18 years of your life with these people, and now, you have to leave it all behind. This can be hard but very exciting at the same time. Moving away to live without your parents can be challenging but exciting, it comes with a lot of responsibility, but it can be one of the best things ever if it is not abused.
College is nothing like it is shown in the movies.
College in the movies is portrayed as constant parties and nothing but fun. This is not the case, college is a lot of fun but it is not about the parties. College is more about finding that perfect place to study and getting good grades than it is about going to parties. Grades are more important than going to a party no matter who is going to be there.
College is a whole new world compared to high school.
High school was all fun and games and you always had a lot of free time to do whatever you like. College is the complete opposite, studying is going to take over your life. Don't get me wrong though you will have free time to make friends and do whatever it is that you like, but you will never have as much free time as you did in high school.
Finals in high school are nothing compared to finals week in college.
Finals in high school were a complete joke and most of my classes didn't even have finals. Finals in college really do matter and they are not a joke at all. Although you will not have a final in every class, they are very important and will matter for your final grades. Finals week in college is very serious and very stressful.
No matter how many AP or college in high school classes you took, they still don't prepare you for college classes.
College in high school and AP classes are great for colleges to look at and to see that you took them although they do not prepare you for anything at all. College in high school and AP classes are great if you took them and got college credit for them (make sure you transfer the credits over ASAP) but if not sadly they were a huge waste of time. College cannot be duplicated in high school because no matter what college will always be harder.
In just a year you may have a completely different friend group, and that's OK.
Friends come and go all the time, just because you were friend with them all throughout high school does not mean that you have to still be friends with the same people. But this also means that you don't treat them like strangers if you see them in public. I promise you will make new friends in college and most likely these will be the people that you'll keep in contact with for the rest of your life.
High school was the best four years of my life but so far my first year in college I've learned more than I have in four years at my high school. I wish that some of the things I learned I already knew but college is a great time to learn life lessons. College can be scary and very stressful at times but in the end, you know that it will all be worth it.
