Are you a senior in high school and dreading the changes that you will soon have to make when you go to college? All throughout your fourteen years at elementary, middle, and high school you have become comfortable with a certain way of living. Yes, jumping up to different schools is a small change, but those changes are not as big as the transitions you will have to go through when going to college. Even if you move to a different town or state and have to switch schools, it still won't be as big as the adjustments you will have to make going to college. The only possible way that the transition to college will not be too bad is if you went to a boarding school. There are a lot of differences and changes between high school and college; it's a totally new life, but these differences are not as bad as many people make them out to be.
The first major difference is the length of the school day. Throughout your past fourteen years of schooling, you have become used to school days starting somewhere around 7:30 am and ending around 2:15 pm. In college the earliest class is 8:00 in the morning. In high school there are usually six classes every day; most of those classes meet everyday during the week. In college, you do not have as many classes as in high school. On Monday I have four classes; the rest of the week I have two or three classes a day. Rarely in college will you have back-to-back classes. Most of the time I have an hour in between each class, but sometimes it can be an hour and a half. In high school, there are no classes after school gets out, but in college there is no set end time for classes. You can even have a class that meets later in the evening. .
The class setup is a lot different than your normal high school class. Class sizes in high school can really be anywhere in the twenties to low thirties. If you go to a big college, like a state school, classes will be a lot larger than the thirties.