The Social Effect: Why is College Better Than High School?

You know how people always tell you that if you had a bad experience in high school, that things would get better once you got to college. Honestly, it is more of a preference and how you handle certain situations. High school is basically a social nightmare, while college is a place where nobody will look after you, and time management is every bit as important as the quality of the multiple page papers you turn in. The question is: why will things get better once you get to college?

For one thing, society is completely different. Though the same people that attended high school the previous year will attend college the next year, most people grow up and mature, knowing that they are on their own. When you get to college, friends are all you have (unless you go to community college, which is a completely different ball game) and friends are much easier to find. The population of a college is extraordinarily larger than the population of a high school, which for some is good and for others, it is scary.

However, there are many social challenges in a high school that are attributed to the smaller environment. In a high school, one person who does not like you can trash your reputation just by saying something to someone else. On a college campus, there are always new people to meet and your reputation will never be tarnished campus-wide. In a high school, one bad relationship or one rejection can lead to the rest of the opposite gender in the institution to steer clear of you. In college, there are so many fish in the sea that it just doesn't matter as much. In a high school, most people know your name, and on a college campus, you would have to do something pretty memorable to get everyone to know your name.

Sometimes, being the unknown statistic is better than being the black sheep in a flock of white. College will grant you challenges quite different from high school, but at the same time, making a couple of mistakes is not the end of the world. In high school, one mistake can proceed you. In college, one mistake will be a flash in the pan. This is what I like to call the social effect. The closer a community is, the more well-known you are and the more what you do matters. Welcome to high school, where everyone is just trying to find what they truly want to do with their day and will push through, push down, or hunt down anyone who gets in the way of their ambitions. Then, when college comes around, day to day will turn into week to week and month to month. It is just the beginning of the rest of your life.