Your Teachers are Lying

For college hopeful high school seniors, an important thing to remember this year is to take your teacher’s harsh explanations of college with a grain of salt. They aren’t telling you the truth.

Trent Brown
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read

I cannot tell you how many times I was given some wild exaggeration of what going to college would be like, while in high school. In reality, it was probably no more than 5 or 6 times, but they are discussions that stick with an impressionable 15–17 year old.

It usually goes like this…

|Cut to a high school classroom|

Your high school trigonometry or senior english (something of the sort) teacher, will get so infuriated because half of the class forgot to do a worksheet the night before that they go off on a rant about the horrors of college.

“You can’t keep forgetting your homework or you’ll never make it in college! Classes will give you 10 worksheets a night and you’ll have to write a 15 page paper every week! Hell, maybe even every night, I wrote so many that I can’t remember. How do you expect to forget that every waking hour of your life is meant to be spent slaving away on an analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’ and still make A’s?!?!”

And then they will go on to say,

(this is personally my favorite part)

“Do you think college professors will be as helpful and lenient as I am? NO! They won’t care about you! You’re just another of the thousand students they deal with everyday! You might not even find a single one that remembers your name!”

/40 high school seniors stare blankly back in horror/

|End scene|


The fact of the matter is, your teacher is exaggerating. Heavily. (Obviously so was I in those quotes, but you get the point)

First, here’s the actual harsh facts:

  • College is hard, much harder than high school, however in a completely different way
  • You are in control of your own motivation. Your mom can’t wake you up in the mornings anymore (unless she calls you every morning to do so, then I guess you’ve got me there)
  • Most professors will be tough on you.

The part that your teachers will surely leave out in their drawn out speeches is the “but” section, because of all of those harsh facts have a but:

  • You most likely aren’t going to have worksheets and papers to do every night, unless you’re a math or science major and then I’m sorry. Most ‘homework’ is across weeks, like a couple 5–6 page papers due during a semester. Exams will be tough, there’s no way for me to make them sound any sweeter. However, you’ll usually have a week or two to prepare for them. Which brings me to my second point.
  • As much as you are your own motivation, finding friends in classes that you’re taking will be extremely beneficial to your own study habits. If you help others with note taking and studying, they will most definitely be loyal to you in the same way. College isn’t about being valedictorian, we’re all on this ‘struggle bus’ together.
  • Professors aren’t these genius hobbits that don’t care about anything but their studies. They’re people who feel emotions and love, just like you hopefully do. I can promise that you can talk to a professor, whether after classes or in office hours, and they will help you in any feasible way. I have had multiple professors, whether in the chemistry, religious, or journalism departments that have gone far out of their way to talk to me and help me out.

Don’t let mr. or ms. McDonald¹ beat your demeanor down into a pulp. You’re going to be fine. Also, if you’re a high school teacher, stop impressing your anger that you can’t go back to the golden days onto your 15–17 year old students.

College is the greatest time that I have yet experienced, no matter whether it was the semester where I got a 3.6 GPA or the one where I got 2.0. It won’t be easy, but it isn’t 4 years of Hell. And it definitely isn’t high school.


¹ — If you are a teacher with that name and have never done this, then I apologize, that was just a random name that came to mind. I’ve never even had a teacher with that last name. However, if your name is in fact McDonald and you have spoke words such as those mentioned earlier, then come on now.

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Trent Brown

Written by

There are good opinions and there are bad opinions. There are also my opinions.

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