High school is the most challenging part of life for a high school student. Trying to find your social group is key, and maintaining those friendships shapes your high school experience. Grades are not taken as seriously as they should for most people, but they are still maintained to please your parents. Skipping class, skipping class, or being late in general is customary, and most of your time is managed by the "adults" in your life. You find yourself in a confusing space, struggling between your free will and the restrictions placed on you by law, be it your parents, your schools, or even state laws, which regulate the times you are allowed to being what you can wear, who you can date (if you're even allowed to date at all), in high school you hear stories about how college kids only take about four classes a day and think, "what's the matter?" the big commotion? I have 7 lessons EVERY DAY. The concept of college tuition isn't entirely clear, or at least it wasn't to me at the time. I believed that the workload would not be much different from high school, however, it only took two weeks for me to realize that I was very wrong. Essays, labs, lab reports, two-hour lectures, three-hour labs, then more lectures, not to mention work study. You are loaded with double the information, double the work and half the time. It goes without saying that rapid adaptation is required. Many people make it through high school without ever having to study, so they don't develop good study habits that are essential in college. With all the new information you need to learn, memorize, and fully understand before the next lesson, studying is as necessary as the lesson itself. In college you study so much that you start to feel like you're self-taught, the teacher introduces you to the material and it's your job to retain and understand it. There's not much time to dwell on a concept if one in fifty students doesn't understand it, so you're bound to be swept away or asked to meet with the professor after class if you have trouble understanding. Again, the workload of high school is that everyone tends to wear the same things because they shop in the same areas, use the same slang, listen to the same music and it can all get monotonous. College is a completely different ballgame. There are people from all over the world, with different upbringings, with styles you've never seen, words you've never heard said with accents that make your ears perk up, and artists you wish you never thought twice about listening to. It's as if everyone arrived on a flying saucer from their specific planets. Learning about all the different cultures around you from the people you come in contact with excites you. This is where you make new bonds and new friendships. Your shell of comfort is broken and outside of it is where you shed the skin of conformity. You realize that everyone is different in more ways than you