Photo courtesy of freecollegenow.org
Are seniors ready for the future?
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Yearbooks have been distributed, colleges chosen, and summers planned out before fall classes. The year is almost at an end and it is at this point, standing on the edge of senior year, that the class of 2017 is feeling the most nervous for the future.
Ask any teacher at SG, and they will all say that one of their purposes as teachers is to prepare their students for higher education. But are these students truly ready for college? Whether they remain in California or go out of state, all students will experience varying degrees of culture shock and homesickness.
What is taught in the classroom does not compare to the various life lessons students must learn before moving on to the “real world.” Things like managing money, paying tuition on time, and putting yourself before anyone else in social situations.
Students will have gone through kindergarten to high school with about the same group of people. The same groups of friends that have lasted from elementary to senior year. But, these groups are going to be split up and going to different parts of California and (in some cases) parts of the country. Students will now have to make one of the biggest transition in their lives without some of their best friends.
The student body has gone through different transitions before. Some students have gone from an elementary school to middle school and high school, while others attended a K-8 school before high school. Moving to a higher grade and to bigger schools are big transitions; ones that grow bigger as we have moved on to higher grade levels. However, the jump from high school to college is far bigger than we could probably imagine.
Depending on which school seniors have chosen, the sheer number of students at a college will be daunting. Lecture halls filled with hundreds cannot be compared to the 36 students that fill every classroom at SG. Yet there are also schools that have as little as five students per classroom. Whatever the size difference, any change will be daunting to the seniors moving on to college this fall.
As graduation comes closer, seniors may feel mounting levels of uncertainty of what the future holds. This is completely normal, and each person has a different reason for feeling this way. But, one thing is certain for the entire class of 2017: as a whole, we are as ready for the future as we have ever been.
