A new perspective

By Anna Callaghan

When I thought about college in middle and high school, I pictured it as a world that was incredibly mature. I remember seeing college students studying at local coffee shops and in glancing at their materials in passing, I marveled at how complex it looked.

While it is true that college is academically challenging and has a closer connection with the real world, it is hardly what I expected it to be as a child. In numerous ways, it is simply an extension of high school only with more autonomy and freedom to act away from the watchful eye of parents.

I came into freshman year expecting to feel more mature simply due to the magnitude of the transition, but I quickly learned that in many aspects I felt as if I had taken a step backward. I no longer had access to my car, causing me to rely on walking, taking the bus or bumming rides, which is very humbling. Living in the dorms also brought a whole new set of rules that I was not forced to abide by at home.

This is not to say that college is not an exponential improvement upon high school, it is simply to illustrate that in many aspects it is not so polar in its differences.

As a good amount of alumni returned this past weekend, I realized how sheltered college life could be in the sense that there is no progression to a next level of the same caliber. In all schooling up until this point, each higher level came with new independence and opportunities for fun.

Of course, after graduating there is an inherent progression as the search for a career commences, but the life of partying excessively and being constantly surrounded by peers and friends seems to die down.

Unlike the transition from high school to college the transition to a career tends to abandon those elements and the focus is more on work and less on play. Many people refer to college as "the glory days" and "the best four years of my life."

In talking to an alumni about what he is doing now, he told me grimly about his job and advised me to stay in school for five years if I could because I will definitely miss it. Another told me about how work consumes her time and she lacks a social life, though she said it was nice to have money.

The purpose of higher education is to prepare students for the real world, but it seems like after experiencing all college has to offer, a good number of students want to postpone its end as the real world in many ways simply cannot measure up in the same fashion.

It is reassuring that this university provides a level of education that allows newly graduated students to find jobs and simultaneously gives them an experience that they value so highly. It indicates that their time at Santa Clara was memorable in a multitude of ways and I am grateful that I can look forward to that.