Throughout your whole high school career, teachers will tell you that university professors are not going to care about you and that you are going to have to learn things by yourself. So far, that’s a lie. During my first couple of weeks in university, my professors have been incredibly welcoming and supportive. Most professors know and understand that the workload difference between high school and university is massive. It seems to me that they try to make it so we can adapt to the changes easily and comfortably.

High school is very helpful in preparing you for university. It shows you different learning techniques, writing techniques and studying techniques so you can learn what works best for you. From my experience, the most important thing I learned and practiced throughout high school was how to properly cite sources and not plagiarise. Academic honesty is a huge contributing factor in academic writing. Since teachers were very strict about plagiarism and cheating on assignments, it’s now a habit for me to always credit other’s work.

The one big difference that I have noticed is the amount of freedom you have in assignments. In high school, the assignment’s rubric was descriptive and specific about what you had to do and how to do it. In university, you can choose how you want to write assignments and use the best learning techniques that work for you. Although the freedom you have is enjoyable, you do have to make sure to stay on task and up to date with your work since you don’t have a teacher reminding you what to do all the time.  The strictness in the assignments made them not enjoyable and tedious to do but also made them easier. Having the outline and rubric for the assignment felt limiting but also assuring. Maybe it’s just because I am a first-year and I am excited to be in university, but my assignments have been interesting to do.

In high school, you must take required classes about subjects you’re not really interested in. For example, why would you want to take a science class when you want to learn more about English and poetry? You don’t, but you must do it to get enough credits to graduate. In university, there’s the freedom to choose your classes and learn what you want knowing that it will help you in the future. It is a choice to be here which makes learning fun and exciting.