North Texas Daily

Transitioning from high school to college can be challenging. Everything from social status, financial situations and responsibilities can be an overwhelming shift for many college students. From personal experience, I can say that you are not the only one.

If you are anything like me, you picked a university that was far from home, but not too far, so that for whatever reason, you had some independence from the town that you grew up in. Wanting change is good, but it did not prepare you for how homesick you were going to feel after the first month in college.

Keeping up with high school friends becomes more difficult and even though everyone was so close in those times, inevitably everyone starts to drift apart. The solution to that is to make friends in college. As difficult as it may seem, it is not impossible. Everything from joining an organization on campus to starting a group chat in one of your classes, to making a small study group all work.

One thing that I have noticed as a college student is that I am broke — like all the time. As much as my parents were willing to spare some bucks to go to the movies when I was in high school, it just seems to hit different when you are in college. It may be because as a college student, I finally got a taste of the real world and I got to see how expensive living is, but I always feel guilty asking my parents for money.

There are several ways to become more independent in terms of income. For example, getting a job and opening your own bank account. Many colleges have on-campus jobs and those come in very handy when you are a full-time student because they work around your class schedule. Some colleges even have money management programs that can help you be more aware of how you are budgeting your money. In my case, I feel a sense of accomplishment by being able to responsibly provide my own needs and entertainment.

On the subject of responsibility, that is another area that is a difficult one to get used to when you come to college. In high school, it was very easy to set a routine because five days out of the week it was the same thing for the twelve or so years that you were in public school. However, in college, it is the complete opposite because schedules fluctuate throughout out the week. There is no one to tell you to go to class or to do the work assigned in your classes because it is up to you to decide if it is going to be done or not.

For the first time you can finally understand what it means when an adult in your life told you to prepare for college because of how different it is from high school. Nevertheless, the college experience builds your character and shapes us into the people that we are going to become.

Featured Illustration: Miranda Thomas