College And High School – Two Very Different Places

Having a great education is the major key to becoming a very successful in life! This not only requires the diploma from high school but also the big diploma you get from the college you attend. As a recent high school graduate and a current college freshman I can tell you that College and High school are two very different places. It can be very difficult for one to really get adjusted to it. Although there may be many differences one can not only look at them, the similarities between the two outweigh the differences.

Firstly, at William Fleming high school, most of my classes were assigned to me by a guidance counselor that helped me choose and set up my schedule for the upcoming school year. Here at Hampton University, I have an advisor with whom I can make appointments with if need be about my schedual, but they do prefer that we try and do it on our own first. In college, I’m given the opportunity to choose the professor I want even though I may not know them.

Another difference is in high school I was given textbooks, workbooks and some of the materials I needed for the school year. Now in college, I am responsible for getting my textbooks, workbooks, and all the materials I need for the semester on my own with little to no help from the school and then do it all over again for the next semester and so on. Secondly, if you miss class in college it can be really hard to catch back up, and you have to rely heavily on your classmates and friends to keep updating you on everything that you’ve missed while you were out, because professors don’t have the time to do so. If you continue to constantly miss too much class in college then you may possibly end up failing and being asked to drop the class. Having that rule has really encouraged me to not miss any class but I never really did anyway, perfect attendance. In college if an assignment is due the day that you happened to miss class for whatever the reason maybe, chances are your professor is not going to take it, unless there is a legitimate excuse on why you’ve missed the class that day. As a college student at Hampton University, we are expected to remember the important deadlines and the repercussions if the deadlines are not met in a timely manner because now you can’t get your parents to call in and convince your teacher to make the great a bit higher. Now at William Fleming high school teachers were a lot more lenient with students because if you missed class you would have 2-3 days to get the late work turned in and if it wasn’t in by the end of the 2nd or 3rd day it then became a zero in the grade book.

Lastly, as I went through William Fleming high school, you are really starting to find yourself and think about what you want to do with your life. You have a little bit more freedom than you would in middle school. That’s because high school is a very structured environment which really challenges you to learn and try new things and to also think outside of the box. You also become a lot more dependent on teacher and other people to help guide you through the next for years, because they are looking for the answers rather than doing it themselves. In college your professor is available by appointment which means you can get the help you need after class, because if your professor has 30-60 students in one room it can get really crazy simply because their only one person. Also in college you really have to be very self-reliant and most importantly you really have to know how to be responsible because you are all on your own, for instance nobody's gonna call and wake you up or even tell you to go to class. A high school student needs to find a way in which they study the best so they can ensure that they get the best grades. College is all about studying, so you really need a good, constant way to study and do work diligently. Not only is that important but also knowing how to write strong papers with good vocabulary leads to better grades.

To summarize, after spending four years in high school I can tell you everything there is to know about the inner workings of William Fleming High School. Basically all the points that I’ve mentioned earlier about guidance counselors and the super structured way everything was done. Now that I’ve been in college for about a month or so, I’ve also been able to comprise some factors about college that at first glance had surprised me, like how everything is completely in our hands now as students and the highly structured way that high school was managed is no more. But even now as I’ve presented multiple reasons why Hampton University is different than at William Fleming high school I still know that I have so much more to learn about college. After four years of high school I had finally gotten the hang of things and now I can’t wait to see what I’ll learn, see, and also how I grow into a better person in the next four years here and how I’ll have an even better understanding about how different and similar the two are.