Moving On

So the micro-biography section of this blog is over, and except for a few small anecdotes, hopefully everything from here on is the future, such is college and life. It's been over 3 weeks that I've been here at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and sometimes it seems as if this is still my first day. This morning I awoke to find myself 10 minutes late for English 1101. I dawned a pair of gym shorts, a t-shirt, flip-flops and picked up my laptop to get on my way. When I got to the classroom building where I was supposed to be twenty minutes earlier I found that the classroom was empty. Opening up my laptop and looking into my email I found that class had been canceled. Moral of the story? Check email every morning to find out whether or not there will really be class.
Why hadn't I thought of this necessity? Because I'm fresh out of high school and even after having held multiple leadership positions and graduating fifth in class, I can't possibly foresee the thousands of differences between high school and any college, especially Georgia Tech. In my small experience here at Georgia Tech, I have learned a few key differences and learned even how to manage them.
The first key difference that every college student learns is that there is a completely different level of freedom and responsibility in college in comparison to high school. Only a month ago I was still asking my parents when curfew was, and now I find myself completely left to my own vices and decisions. Of course, to these decisions are sometimes left consequences. For example, last night I didn't go to sleep till around 6 in the morning in order to help my friend with psychology study and to myself catch up on studying. That cause led to an effect, my near missing my non-existent class this morning. I suppose I should count myself lucky.
With responsibility being the first major difference between high school life and college life, I think that the amount of adversity is the second. There is such a plethora of different views, opinions, races, and religions that if one really wants to they can almost always find an argument, and unlike high school, they can be sure that the argument will be intelligently supported. Within only a few weeks here I have made friends from as many as ten different countries, and from all but one continent. I think it's great that Georgia Tech draws from so many different places, and that because of that Georgia Tech is able to represent so many opinions and beliefs.
So responsibility and adversity are out of the way as two major differences between high school and college. But while these have been differences, they haven't been surprising. We've always been told that we would run into those things as we move on into our own lives. I think the greatest challenge anyone finds here at Tech is time management. Where exactly is the fine line that allows us to do good in classes, party on the weekends, be true members of the fraternities/sororities, and still be able to go to all the football games and literally thousands of other school events? In high school, I was one of the most involved kids there, every one there knew me because I somehow affected every one in being a part of a different community with each club I was in. Here I find that difficult to do, I look around at my calculus lecture hall and realize that sadly there is truly no possibility of me knowing or meeting every single student in there with me. I think if anything has shocked me it has been my constant struggle with time management. But I'm not the only one, as I said before, my room mate and I stayed up till 6 last night to be able to help him on for the 3 tests he had the next day.
So we've all moved in and we're all still adapting, with new lessons every day and seriously just trying to sometimes make it through each day, we're just doing the best we can. This story of moving from high school to college has barely even begun, and I can promise that it won't end for a very long time.