The Transition...

When you are a student in their sophomore to junior year in high school, you start looking at possible options for college. You begin to think about things like "does this school offer the program I want to study?", "Does the school have good sports programs I can get into?", "Will the work be easier at a community college v.s a four year school?" ect. As a junior in high school it was all about "will there be cute boys to look at?". When you get to the end of your junior year, you start hearing most of your student peers talking about what colleges they were or were not accepted. You start to wonder if the school you chose is the right match for you. When your senior year rolls around, many students (including myself), start to come down with a bad case of "senioritis" and before you know it you are cutting class to go have lunch with a friend. In what seems to be a blink of an eye, the end of your senior year in high school is nearing its end. Some start to panic and scrambling to make sure they have all of the credits they need to graduate and continue to college, while others know for sure that they are graduating and each day seems easier than the one before it. You start reminiscing about all of the fun times you had while you were in high school and all of the friends as well as enemies you have made over the last four years of your life. Once graduation hits, so does all of the different emotions, fear, sadness, excitement, joy and of course pride.

As a teenager, sometimes we don't realize how off our priorities are. After summer passes and it is time to go to college, some students take advantage of the freedom that comes along with college. No more teachers calling home if you miss classes or homework assignments, no more getting in trouble for chewing gum in class and finally, for all those high school love birds, no one to tell you "no kissing in the hallways". It all seems wonderful, until you get your first semester grades. That is when reality hits for the students that took college freedom for granted. Some students give up and drop out completely, while others continue to spend their parents/government money to slack off for another semester.