In college is it true that you get a lot of homework and write 50 page essays and you stay up all night finishing them? What is it like?
What is it like? It’s a lot of work and a lot of fun 
50 page essays are rare, as far as I know.
You’ll likely get 10-page final papers your first semester, which may go up to about 15-20 later on (jr/sr years).
You do have 2-3 hours of homework (preparation, research, etc) per class period and doing it without reminders is the hardest part at first. Your professor isn’t there to tell you there are readings to do or a paper due, it’s on your syllabus, you’re in college so presumably you can read, therefore you can read your syllabus and see there’s a paper due and plan in consequence (so, the very day you get your syllabus, you copy in red in your planner each due date, each exam date, and one week before write yourself a reminder 'paper due in a week!")
You have more freedom than you’ll ever have in your life. If you’re in the honors college, you have priority registration, which means that you may never have a class before 10 if you don’t want to. Your days will be packed (unless you don’t take advantage of what your college has to offer). Freshman year you’ll join a dozen clubs, but after a semester you’ll realize you really care about 4 or 5 of them and will start getting involved. Some will be just for fun and relaxation (quidditch, scrapbooking…) and others will be related to your major, your classes, or your future job. You’ll likely have an on campus job or an off campus one (work study is better because it’s mandated to work around your classes), you’ll have study groups, you’ll have to fit it all in one day and you will go to bed exhausted.
Well, of course, you can skip study group, party every evening, join zero club, hardly spend any time in the library, but your time as a college student will be very short - you may not be shown the door after your first semester but definitely after your second. It’s not high school: college is for students who want to be there and deserve to be there, whose work allows them to be. You don’t need to be a genius but studying has to be your full time job (35-40 hours a week if you add classes,labs, study groups, homework/research), and everything else will be a complement to enrich your experience. It’ll all depend on you - no parent to nag you to get out of bed in the morning, checking if you’ve done your hw, if you eat properly or only ice cream and pizza, etc. You’ll make mistakes and it’s in learning from these mistakes and correcting them that you’ll become an adult.