With only a little more than five weeks left in the semester, I guess it is only appropriate that I look back on my experiences so far at Paul Smith’s College. There is no doubt in my mind that this semester has been the biggest academic transition thus far in my life. That is obviously because I graduated high school and began studying at college. This transition has presented unique challenges, none of which are impossible to overcome. Sure, some challenges are easier to overcome than others, but they are challenges nonetheless. I think I can actually say that I was fairly prepared to meet these challenges, despite never facing them before.
Perhaps the challenge that is most easy to identify is the challenge of not only living away from home, but living with a roommate. I, like the majority of college kids, grew up with my own room, so having to share living quarters with somebody who was a total stranger presented a challenge. Sure I had been to plenty of summer camps before, where I had to share sleeping quarters with other kids for a week. College is definitely nothing like a summer camp; that’s for sure. While college may be fun and like so many people say “some of the best times of your life”, it’s not all fun and games. I can personally admit that I was homesick for pretty much the first time ever upon my first days here at college. It’s not like summer camp where your parents come and pick you up after a week; you’re here to stay. I know I am probably making this sound quite ominous, which is not my intention. It does, however, show the difficulty of the transition. There is really nothing that you can do to prepare for living with a total stranger for a year.
I eventually overcame this challenge, because I knew it was part of the territory. During those first couple of days at college, I yearned to be in a room by myself. Now I think a room to myself would be kind of awkward, and I would rather have someone else around (granted that I am comfortable with that person). Don’t get me wrong, I still value the alone time that I have, but I’ve learned to be comfortable living with someone else. The great part about overcoming this challenge was that I really didn’t have to go out of my way to do so. Becoming comfortable with my roommate kind of just happened. Sure I started a couple of conversations that I may not have before coming to college, but nothing very much at all. Experience is really the only way to overcome the awkwardness of living with a stranger, and I’d definitely say that I have overcome that awkwardness.
I’d say that the second biggest challenge for me this semester has been the transition from the work that I did in high school to the work that I now do in college. High school was really just a breeze because most of the work that I got, I finished in class, because I could do the work quick enough that I didn’t have to take it home and do it for homework. Not only that, but a lot of times, I didn’t receive homework on a regular basis. Don’t get me wrong, I knew how to handle those nights where I had to write two essays, make a poster, prepare a presentation, and do forty math problems. I think the biggest thing in high school was that the work and the classes just weren’t as serious as in college. I took my grades very seriously, but I usually didn’t feel a great sense of urgency, because it was just high school; and as long as I looked good for colleges, it was all right.
College is just different simply because it has to be taken more seriously. It just goes to show you the value of money in society nowadays. When we were kids, we didn’t think anything of the money our parents were paying for school taxes, because everybody was forced to go to school. Now that we see how much a college education costs, and when added to the fact that we, the kids, now have to help pay for it, our education is taken a lot more seriously. I think I can say that I’ve definitely worked harder to strive for good grades in college when compared to how hard I worked for my grades in high school. I’ve never been more motivated to take notes or to study than I am in college. So, transition hasn’t been difficult because I’ve always had a pretty good work ethic, but it has been a transition nonetheless.
When it comes to the transition from high school to college, young adults usually face the same challenges. These challenges are basically summed up in this article I found online (http://www.d.umn.edu/tutoring/transition-to-college/). For me the biggest challenge was adjusting to life away from home, and now that I’ve already overcome that challenge, college has become more and more enjoyable.
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