High school shows what you can do with parents, teachers, police, counselors and society leaning on you to succeed. College shows you what you can manage on your own.

But, that's not twelve hundred characters, so stick with me for another minute or two. In high school teachers call parents, parents call teachers, teachers, counselors and parents all talk; and if you've been absent, teachers talk to cops. In college, well, I won't say that people don't care, that's not true, people definitely care, but they care the same way a boss or a colleague cares. The assumption is that you're an adult, capable of making your own decisions.

This has benefits and drawbacks. It's entirely possible to skip a class, if you're trying to finish the work for another class. On the other hand, unless you have a genuine emergency and proof of that emergency, you can probably forget about any makeup work.

Also, while high school teachers are generally a pretty uniform lot (occasionally you'll have an outstanding one or a terrible one, but they generally stay in the middle ground) college professors vary widely, both in what they expect from you and how good they are at teaching. I've had professors who were brilliant and entertaining lecturers and professors who were so dull I barely made it through the first day before I dropped their class. The point is, in college you want to keep an eye on professors you like, so you can take other classes from them.

On a side note, some professors are a littleodd. I had a professor who insisted that we be on time to her classes. If we weren't the punishment was: singing. That's right, it's not a typo, singing. You had to get up in front of the class and sing a song of the professors choosing. Can you imagine that happening in high school?

Learn more about this author, Evan Carden.
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