In just under a month, I will be a high school graduate. But, perhaps more importantly, in just four months, I will be a college freshman. Looking at this in perspective, it seems scary. I’ll be living on my own and suddenly have a lot more responsibility that I haven’t had to deal with before. Reflecting on my high school years I can’t help but wonder: could something have been done to better prepare me for this?

    On social media, there’s a lot of people questioning how we’re making such large life decisions when we’re still having to ask to go to the bathroom. We’re expected to have some idea of what we want to do for the rest of our lives and what school we’ll spend the next four years of our lives in. All while functioning under the same rules we’ve had since sixth grade.

    Once in college, there won’t be anyone that yells at us to pay attention in class. No one to pull us aside if we don’t do our homework, or to call our parents if we don’t come to class. This responsibility falls squarely on our shoulders. This sudden level of responsibility may spell disaster for some students.

    There are teachers here, however, that are helping us out the little that they can. They give us the sink-or-swim mentality while there’s still others around to keep us learn to make the right decisions with our newfound responsibility. If we pay attention in class or spend it texting, that’s our choice and if we chose to not pay attention, then it’s our responsibility to still get our stuff done. If we don’t do our homework, that’s our problem. We’re transitioning into this while we still have our parents and our TAP teachers around to help us keep on track.

    What this provides is life lessons. Past high school, there won’t be someone hovering over us making sure we get our stuff done. There will be only ourselves. So why doesn’t high school help us transition? For all their talk about helping us move on to college, this seems to be a pretty serious gap that just might set us up for failure.