Greetings! I am just about finished with my freshman year of college; I can hardly believe it! It feels like just yesterday I was doing my schoolwork at home, sitting around in my PJs, and checking facebook between subjects. Oh. That's probably because it was just yesterday that I was doing all those things! For some reason, people make college out to be so much harder than it actually is. "Spend 2 hours studying for every 1 hour you're in class" is the rule of thumb I was taught upon entering college, but to be honest, I hardly spend that much time and I've still got a 4.0. Now I'm not saying that college is something that you can just breeze by in, but I'm just telling you that it's really not as bad as people try to make it out to be. At least, it isn't that bad for me.
I have learned so much about myself this year. I'm not going to bore you with all of my discoveries, but I do want to point out that college is a place to discover, even define, yourself. In high school you're dictated by what subjects you have to study, but in college you get to pick your courses. Of course you have to take the basics (which seems totally unfair to me; I mean, what use does an English major like me have for math?) but you still get to explore a wide variety of electives. Who knows? You might enter college thinking that you want to study nursing but realize that you have a passion for Script Writing. It might not seem likely, but it is possible.
I'm not going to pretend like I'm an expert on all things college (I'm learning something called "humility" which is really taking a toll on my superior attitude!) but I will acknowledge that I know more about college now than when I was just finishing high school. I'm going to assume that I'm not totally different than everyone else, so I'm going to impart some of my wisdom so that you high school students (or your high school kids) can get the 411 on college from a legitimate college student (is it weird that I like the sound of that? "Legitimate college student." Makes me sound... legit ;) )
***I'm taking a brief side note to acknowledge that I blog so much differently than I write my papers. Although I'm not sure my professors would appreciate such a snarky tone, and this blog is just a place for me to get out my thoughts, so I guess it makes sense. It's just weird to write something so informal after writing academically for about 6 months now.... Alright, side note over!
Here is the advice topic I have today: Community Colleges
I'm not proud to admit it, but I'll do it anyways for the sake of honesty: whenever I would hear the term "community college" I would think of a place where students who couldn't get in anywhere else went. I feel so bad about that, and I have no idea where I even got that idea. Community colleges are not a place of rejects. Not at all. Community colleges are places that want to help students get their feet under them before they head out into the "real world." There is a diversity of students who attend community colleges, ranging from high schoolers to high school dropouts trying to earn a degree some twenty years later to just your average college student trying to earn a degree on a bargain. I am very sorry for all of my misconceptions. Very sorry.
But the point of this is not to make myself look like an awful person who doesn't understand the world. Actually, my point is to correct anyone who might have the same misconceptions. In fact, community colleges are probably the best bet for any high school student, no matter their GPA. Unless you can get a pretty good scholarship to some prestigious university (and I don't mean a couple thousand dollars; I mean something to pay for at least three quarters of your tuition) I highly recommend starting out at a community college, especially if you live close enough to commute. The college does not employ wannabe instructors: the professors actually know their stuff, and plenty of them have their Ph.D.s. Both of my psych professors have taught at four year universities, and they teach the exact same stuff at all of the schools. They don't "dumb it down" for the community college students, as my one professor put it. Community colleges are legitimate colleges where you can get a legitimate degree at the fraction of the cost you would have to pay at a four-year university.
I'm going to take a minute to talk about myself, and I promise I'm not bragging. I'm still trying to make a point:
I have an ACT composite score of 28. I got a 32 on the English portion of the test. I scored higher than 90% of the test takers in the country. I graduated high school with a GPA of 3.769 (and I remember the exact number because it makes me so mad that I just missed a 3.77). I graduated in the top 10% of my class. I am smart and I attend Stark State Community College.
The previous paragraph was not to brag about myself, as I stated above. It was to point out that I'm not a reject. Smart people attend community colleges. I'm a member of the Phi Theta Kappa honor society, and there are quite a few Stark State students who are members so I know for a fact I'm not a one in a million kind of student.
So my advice today is that if you have an opportunity to attend a community college, go for it! (As long as it saves you money.) And it's not like you won't have the opportunity to attend a four-year university; community colleges are typically only two years. Just earn your associate degree and then transfer. Think about it: everyone needs to take the same basic courses before getting into the degree specific ones. Wouldn't you rather spend $500 on a College Algebra class rather than $2500? (Unless you're into wasting money. If that's the case, you're an awful person. Don't you know there are starving children in Africa??)
I can't make anyone go to a community college and save thousands of dollars. I just hope that you will consider it. I don't know about you, but I have no intentions of ending up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt upon graduating college. But of course, to each his own :)
