<p>Awhile back I voted ‘being away from my friends’. I still agree with it, and it’s hard, but at the same time today I looked at the poll and assumed I voted “adjusting to a whole different social world”. I went to what’s considered to be a pretty bad high school. It’s the kind of school that you tell people you went to and they go “I’m sorry”. People really over think it- it definitely was not the worst place in the world. Sure, some of it was rough and it turns out bad for some people, but I got through okay. </p>
<p>However, my community college is a whole different story. It’s in an area of the state where there are a lot of conservative people who would never imagine being even close to the kind of environment I went to high school in. No one in high school really talked about views on politics or religion, or never really cared how other people felt about it. Here in college if I dared to mention my opinions people would look at me like I’m crazy. In fact, I’ve experienced that. Even some of the teachers clearly side with a lot of the students on these subjects, and I just feel like I’m a completely different from the people I go to school with. I feel like I’ve experienced such a different lifestyle than them after what I went through in high school.</p>
<p>Being away from home for the first time is of course a real challenge. Your taken out of your comfort zone and you don’t have anyone to turn to such as friends and family when your feeling under pressure.</p>
<p>For me, the number one challenge is going to be getting used to taking classes that require lots of studying. I’m a non-traditional student who went back to school last year and the classes I’ve taken haven’t been that challenging (with the exception of my physics class). So getting used to nightly studying after being in the working world for years will be the biggest challenge for me. </p>
<p>I am slightly worried about being treated like a pariah by my classmates because I’m a bit older than they are, though. Not that I want to hang out socially with my younger classmates, but I don’t want anyone to dread having me as a partner for group assignments or something like that.</p>
<p>academics is the most difficult to adjust. No one is holding your hand in college. It is now up to you to do your work, study, and go to class because absolutely no one will tell you to do any of the latter. </p>
<p>in general though, it is adjusting to a life where you are responsible for all your actions i.e. when to eat, study, relax, party, do laundry. undergrad college is the really transition to adulthood.</p>
<p>I would say that academics were significantly harder in high school…and I go to an excellent private university. Time management is more of an issue than the actual work.</p>
<p>A Lot of people can’t go to college because of money. The other academics and social environment take some time to adjust to, but they are adjustable to.</p>
<p>This might sound bad, but poorer people would probably have an easier time paying for college. There are so many need based financial aid programs available that its not even funny (including scholarships) and I’m sure everyone here knows that. But for me, my family has enough income to not qualify for financial aid based on need, but not enough to really cover all of college. Sure there are scholarships I can apply for, but I found that they are more accommodating for people who are diverse in some way. And I’d say I’m about as average as they get lol. I don’t have the grades to get any scholarships from academic success either. Needless to say, I think the financial difficulties are going to be the worst part of college. I’ll probably be in so much debt after college.</p>
<p>For me its about financial challenges. I work hard to support my education, so I think this is the one thing probably would be challenging to me.</p>
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<p>If you go to a school where the program you’re in is renowned to be hard, when you get there it will be hard. You may come from a nice school, and have done all your first year courses during high school, done well on the SATs, APs, gotten nice grades… but really the academics hurt. I thought I could just force myself to work hard and that college would be easier than high school, I’d have time for other things. Computer Engineering is not easy. We can spend dozens of hours studying… More than a third of students have left my program. To put this in perspective, their averages coming in is a 92. Many are foreigners from other countries, and rather than their language being a hindrance to their studying, their advantage in high school lets them score higher on average.</p>
<p>But there is variation, some art students spend all day smoking weed. Others wake up at 4pm after a night playing games. Most non engineers get up at noon. T_T I have 30 hours of classes a week! Plus several meeting hours… I’m in first year!!!</p>
<p>Its definitely going to be more challenging to manage all the work thrown on me. As well I am not used to taking notes through lectures; I generally just copy whatever the teacher writes on the board…</p>
<p>Being thrown completely out of your comfort zone…I’m going to know absolutely nobody there (and vice versa) since no one from my town really ventures out past the cow pastures to a big city and then adjusting to dorm life; sharing a room, community bathrooms, etc.</p>