Asian_Girl2009

I'm a senior in high school and will be graduationg on June 2009. I'm kinda afraid to face college after I graduate. I mean I think it will be so scary without your parents with you and everything and doing everything by yourself. =/ I know that college will be so much better than high school...sometimes I feel that I really want to go to college already and at times I feel very scare to face reality. When enter college for the first time, how was it like - exciting or scary? Were you totally lost when you first enter? In what ways, college is different and better than high school life??

LilyMoon

Going to college for the first time is both exciting and scary! Expect to feel anything and everything and know that it is normal to feel many different emotions. It's better than High School because you have more independence and opportunities open to you. It can also be overwhelming and lonely at first until you start getting involved and meeting new people. I think one big misconception is that you will make these great friends right away. You will meet many new people but it takes time to develop real friendship....be patient. Think of it as an adventure where you will be tested in more ways than just academic. You will be challenged but you will be growing and learning about yourself all along. That is what college is really all about.

Pseudonym

Any big change is scary, and college can certainly be a big change.

When I first started college, I was a mixture of excited and terrified. My first lecture of my first semester had more people in it than the entirety of my high school and middle school student bodies combined! And for the first few days, it seemed like I would never see the same person twice on such a big campus, so how would I ever make friends? But once I settled into a routine and started getting more comfortable, everything was amazing.

College is like... reality with training wheels. Your parents aren't there to take care of you, but there are a lot of school resources to draw on to help you be academically successful and build a social life. You have a lot more freedom, which means more room to succeed and more room to screw up. You won't have someone checking your homework all the time to make sure you're not falling behind, you won't have someone holding your hand when the work gets hard, but there are tons of places to go to get help if you take the initiative, and tons of opportunities to do amazing things if you look for them.

hyperJulie

Going to college can indeed be a very scary thing, and I honestly cried for days prior to leaving because I thought that I wasn't going to make any friends and it was going to be too hard living without my family. I found that I adjusted surprisingly fast, and I think that a few things can really help that happen. First off, I participated in a program that my school has called JumpStart, which is where you go a few days early and participate in a program involving stuff like learning leadership skills, going camping, doing community service, or learning about the environment. If your school has a program like this I'd highly recommend applying, because it was very helpful in allowing me to get adjusted by having a solid weekend to explore and get to know people between activities without having to worry about classes quite yet.

Other than that, just being around, propping the door open, introducing myself to people helped a lot. You may not have your parents to take care of you anymore, but my friends here have developed a really mutually supportive community. When a girl on my floor got into a car accident last week, immediately a group left to go get her and make sure that she was okay, and these weren't even people she was really that close with.

First time lectures can be really overwhelming at first, but it really doesn't take long before you get into the swing of things and showing up at a 230 student lecture isn't odd or surprising anymore at all. (I'd avoid these though, if possible - big classes are lame.) Ultimately, it takes some getting used to, but the vast majority of students do just fine.

leah377

college is totally amazing. you're not living at home, but you don't have to act like a real adult--such a happy medium