Do you remember the first college brochure you ever received in the mail? I remember mine. It was my junior year of high school, from The University of Memphis, of all places. From that day on until graduation a year later, it seemed as though I couldn’t open my mailbox without finding yet another brochure from some random college vying for four years of my tuition money.
Each brochure typically featured pictures of photogenic college kids grinning from ear to ear, playing ultimate frisbee on the quad, attending a packed sporting event, or taking part in some other fun activity intended to sell you on the college experience, before you even had a chance to see the tuition costs on the last page.
Since the very first day of high school, it seemed as though it was drilled into our brains that once we graduated—our options were either college, military, or failure. Nothing about entrepreneurship or volunteer work, very little about trade schools, and the idea of skipping or even putting off college was a complete non-starter.
If we’re going to continue pushing college immediately after graduation as the standard for postsecondary education, high school graduates deserve to be shown an at least somewhat realistic image of what college life entails.
They deserve to see that college life is more than just campus parties and sporting events. They deserve to see a brochure that shows all the sleepless nights they’ll have to power through, all the moments they’ll want to pull their hair out, and they absolutely deserve to know how they can get through college with as little crippling debt as possible.
It’s a harsh reality that many would probably skip or delay college if they got a realistic idea upfront of the long term toll it would take on their physical, mental, and financial wellbeing.
When asked what they wish they knew before attending college, one member of the editorial board said, “I wish my high school would have explained to us or better prepared us for the fast paced work environment in college.” They went on to say, “high schools or colleges should provide college literacy courses so students don’t enter college completely unprepared. Because not everyone knows someone with college experience who can offer them advice.”
In fairness, SXU offers an abundant array of resources that can help students navigate the ins and outs of college life, but another member of the editorial board expressed a sentiment that I was really able to relate to: “One thing I wish I knew when starting at SXU, was how to utilize campus resources such as the learning center. It would have saved me a lot of trouble in certain classes.”
It would’ve been great if I didn’t have to have a breakdown in front of one of my professors to learn that the counseling center across the street offers free counseling sessions for full time students. It would’ve been great if I didn’t have to fail an entire semester before finding The Learning Center.
It’s great that SXU offers all these resources, but students need to be made aware of them as early as possible to ensure as smooth a transition to college life as possible.