After completing a personally frustrating senior year of high school, full of some bitterness towards grade school and high expectations for the future, I used to believe that college was straightforward, more fun, and all-in-all easy. Thousands of people go to colleges every year, and it seemed like there would not be hard for me to go to college as well. I had multiple siblings that had been to the same school I was planning on attending, those who seemed happy and relaxed a lot and who seemed to really enjoy their lives at college and didn't seem to struggle too much. I had also heard that college provided entertainment and relaxation. But when it actually came to attending college, I had no idea of the level of difficulty I was entering into. I just signed on the dotted line, without even considering whether the material for my expected major of engineering would be too difficult. After all, I had been excelling at difficult honors math and science classes since the dawn of time; how hard could be doing the same stuff at a college be? After experiencing college first-hand, I can agree that college is an entertaining experience. However, it is in no such way easier than high-school, and it requires dedication, persistence, and stability over your own life.
Most people look back on college as one of the craziest times of their life. Parties, drinking, all-nighters, and other stereotypes define college to the public as a time of fun. Sometimes, however, people forget about the other side of the chaos when it comes to on-campus life. The homework, studying, and just plain work time for classes can be a frustrating amount. Often, balancing the fun and the work can lead to anxiety, stress, and personal decay. This was what I unexpectedly stumbled upon the first semester of college, and I found no matter how hard I worked at my classes, they still provided me with terrible grades that are a disappointment to my former excellence before college.
There is another big reason that college is difficult. It is an incredibly new experience. For most, college involves leaving the traditional family household and starting anew in an unfamiliar area with unfamiliar people. This dramatic change can be disconcerting. Sure, the feeling of being reborn among new people is seemingly nice, but the past becomes all too suddenly a distant memory. The emotional pains of starting off by yourself and and/or being in a new environment can be almost too much to stomach. Handling the emotional side of college along with the other stresses makes college increasingly harder for most.
Though some have an easier time adjusting to college life, it is most often an incredibly difficult experience. To the youth of this nation, be prepared for a wild ride!
This essay is a form of opinion that is formed much like that of the first example essay in "What are Opinions", using common sense and deductive reasoning to speak an opinion, without any external background other than personal experience and critical thinking. Opinions are mainly "earned" when they are reasoned explicitly, and I believe I did so in my personal opinion short essay.
-Rory Loe