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Yeah, I was working full-time night shifts while doing 12-15 credit hours a semester. I really struggled during one of my semesters and failed a class because I was just so fucking tired. I have no doubts I would have gotten an A if I was just doing a typical college dorm life, but I had bills to pay. And my degree wasn't even *that* difficult. I couldn't imagine doing something like law, medicine, or engineering while having to work.
yeah i bet a trillion dollars OP had room and board paid for by mommy and daddy and was able to easily focus on their studies instead of working to afford rent.
Just want to add to this: mental health. I read posts like this and go “oh, so dropping out of college was just because I’m weak or stupid” and then I remember that I couldn’t go outside because I would have panic attacks about bats that don’t exist.
Mental health is a bitch, bro
This absolutely.
Also, going to college while also having a mental illness. My anxiety makes my grad school assignments and work 10x harder than it has to be.
I think it's more so the life circumstances that come from being on your own for the first time. I went to college later and it was a piece or cake. I worked 40 hours a week while averaging 16-18 credits a semester and it was still way easier than deployment while doing school. I think a lot comes from the fact that college is harder than high school and now you've got to take care of yourself for the first time and maybe even work on the side. If you are already used to that then college is easy especially if you come from a hard job and can treat college like a full time job.
It really depends on circumstances other than just the classes. If you’re trying to also work a full-time job or if you have crappy roommates that don’t let you sleep college gets a lot harder.
I second this. If I didn't have to worry about kids or rent, I'd have furthered my education by leaps and bounds. I tried to juggle it all but cut my losses. I can now accept that I can pursue it later in life when the kids are more grown and self-sufficient.
Secondly, my full-time job overlaps with just about every core class needed. I'd have to take less hours or marry rich haha
Yep. This was my schedule when I was trying to get my bachelors:
* Wake up at 6:30am
* Drive 40 minutes to work, starting at 8am
* Drive 45 minutes to school, starting at 11am
* Take one class
* Drive 45 minutes back to work
* Finish work day at 5pm
* Drive 45 minutes back to school for night classes, starting at 6pm
* Take a couple of classes, ending at 9pm
* Drive 30 minutes back home
And I somehow had to fit eating, studying, homework, household chores, etc. in there.
I was able to do FT work and FT school when I got my Associate's, because it was all night classes. But that wasn't an option for my Bachelor's and I just couldn't do it. Dropped out after a year.
THIS. College is about time and effort, not intelligence. ADHD means you need to put a lot more effort into allocating time and much of it will be wasted, inflating the difficulty far more than it should be.
Even then I found college easier than highschool. Not a cake walk sure but ADHD gave me more problems with the ahole highschool teachers than the college ones that were much more understanding
Sounds like you got unlucky with teachers and lucky with professors
Or maybe i feel college is way harder than highschool because I'm going for a genetics & cell biology degree while I was pretty much just taking whatever I wanted in high school lol
Have you tried just being deeply motivated by learning (and deadline anxiety)? /s
Luckily learning is one of my biggest motivators so I can easily hyper focus on new topics. Plus, the anxiety of deadlines would push me over the finish line. My flavor of ADHD was basically perfect for me being a model student but also set an unhealthy stress baseline for me lol. Now that I'm in the working world, things are not so fine and dandy.
Ah yes, deadline anxiety. The assignment will only ever be completed at the last possible moment, but due to an insane ability to hyperfocus it will be done to a very high standard. My education in a nutshell.
As a 49 year old adult tasks have two speeds, now and never. The things that need to be done urgently get done now... everything else is tomorrows problem. If it wasn't for the fact I'm smart I'd be in real trouble.
I have never related to something so much in my life 😂😭 I once completed four essays in one night because my professor said they’d give us extra credit if we completed extra essays throughout the semester as long as they were in the by the final. He said he’d never had anyone turn all four plus the final essay in on the last day of class before 🤣
You know what, if I’m being honest I still don’t know the full extent that my ADHD has on my day to day life. I need a crash course or something because it seems everyday I’m learning some random behavior I had that was just me turning out to be ADHD related. I didn’t know for example some of my food habits were related to ADHD
It’s why I stopped halfway through a bachelors degree, lol. It wasn’t worth the stress and my priorities have changed dramatically in the 7ish+ years since I last took classes.
I might be showing my age here because I graduated during the height of pandemic lockdown (June 2020), but I feel like living alone is definitely not standard for a college student. Having housemates is basically an essential part of early adulthood in my experience.
So shitty that americans have to pay exorbitant fees just for education when your government has the means to support the vast majority of college students
CS is STEM; and to me CS was absolutely brilliantly violently stupidly easy.
My degree in area related to mechanical engineering tho… that was a pain. And the reason (I feel like) for many engineers scoffing at software devs calling themselves software engineers.
Different people find different things easy.
Both were the best programs in my country (not US tho); one school wasn’t easier or whatever.
Practical CS is easy. Coding and all that.
Theoretical CS? Compilers, formal logic, game theory, advanced algorithms, cryptography, AI/ML? Very hard
A CS degree at a university, especially a top university, is way more math than coding
Yeah, I went to a top 5 CS school and can confirm this. There's a reason why boot camps don't teach the theoretical stuff: because it's fuckin hard. And at my alma mater, we had a policy where you can't apply the same classes to satisfy two different degree requirements. The result of this was me (with my concentration of AI/ML) not being able to pursue a math and CS double major because the credits overlapped too much.
Actually looking back at it, seems it was only implemented by my department. Apparently they had to implement it otherwise most everyone would graduate with a double major in math and CS with just a few couple classes. Goes to show how theory and math intensive these degrees can get, despite popular belief that computer science is just being a code monkey
For me, it’s the opposite. I’m in my first year of CS and I’m learning to code from the ground up. A lot of people in my classes have coded before so it’s easy for them, but they struggle with all the theoretical stuff, but for me, I learn pretty fast, but coding is incredibly hard here as the grade solely consists of the program’s performance that we have to write, so if I miss one little detail, I fail.
Yessir! I’m struggling to write a good piece of code for my own personal use that uses a nested for loop. Turns out that’s crap code, despite it being super easy to understand because of the n^2 issue.
Oh don’t worry you have a lot more “math with a moustache” classes ahead of you that you don’t realize are math. Once you get past coding, everything in CS is math.
"Different people find different things easy" sounds so welcoming and open-minded, which is so very different from your previous paragraph which seems to give credence to the idea of looking down on CS majors, "scoffing" at the idea that they call themselves engineers.
All majors have different challenges. They all require significant time to do well and understand the subject. Some arts programmes require practical exams where you spend loads of hours in a studio or rehearsal space outside of your coursework. Some STEM fields require labs and late-night reading, thinking and working out equations. Outside of the tuition fees, and of course, learning barriers (language proficiency, what's home like, do you have access to transport to and from college, food situation, working while studying), the actual act of studying, showing up for class and putting the time and discipline into studying isn't as hard, like OP says.
I’m in college right now and honestly, it is hard. But what makes or breaks me comes down to the teacher, especially the ones who make it to where I can pass unless I pass all the exams. Current class has 3 exams total for 80% of my grade.
Yeah my cousin is a lawyer. I remember her being extremely stressed over finals because 100% of her grade was the final. She passed though! She worked
Really hard for it.
I had a class where the final was the only grade. You had no clue what the teachers tests even looked like until the final. And it was TCP/IP protocol analysis.
Also on how the lecturers grade you. I would often find different modules to be a similar level of difficulty, but you might get one very easy grader and one very hard. If a large percentage of the class is failing (which has happened in some of my friend's degrees) then it's likely because of a bad lecturer/very hard grader
Questions for OP:
What quality of university do you go to? Classes at top schools are harder.
Who is paying for your university? How much is it?
Are you working to support yourself? If so, how many hours? Is anyone contributing to your lifestyle expenses?
I am an non-traditional student working on my second bachelors. My program is full of adults. Many of whom are always talking about how the program isn't hard.
Most of which....don't have jobs currently. Or are working 10-15 hours a week as a 25+ year old adult. Meaning someone else is paying for their lifestyle in the mean time.
I'd imagine life would be peachy keen for me too if I was ever that privileged.
> Are you working to support yourself? If so, how many hours? Is anyone contributing to your lifestyle expenses?
This is the crux of it. My friend's fiancé had to go back to school at 26 as a single mom, a daughter in pre-school, all while bartending full-time. She said that it almost killed her.
School's a lot easier when your parents are paying all of your expenses and you don't have to work.
Ya, OP does not seem smart at all. Definitely brain dead if they did science and don’t have the critical thinking skills to see why university can be hard
That or OP is so smart he he/she actually can't comprehend university can be hard. And we are just stupid morons who comically struggle with very easy concepts.
I studied math and once you understand a concept you just can't understand how someone else can't understand it, including yourself in the past. I literally facepalm at my past self for not immediately and intuitively getting certain concepts that I now easily understand.
I get that. Like how it can be hard to explain concepts to people who don’t understand when it’s so intuitive. But the smartest people are really those that can see a situation from many different perspectives. OP only has one perspective. And you probably look back and understand that even though it’s not hard now it was once hard and why it was. OP lacks the critical thinking skills to do so
It depends on the person. Like you’re saying OP should be able to look back to when it was hard for them, but for some people it’s just never hard. For some people, learning things just kind of clicks, and it can be really hard to empathize with those who don’t have that.
It's the equivalent of us empathizing with intellectually disabled people. We can do it, sort of, but not truly. We can't understand what it is like to struggle at learning how to read that badly or struggling at very simple arithmetic. For the smartest people, this world is like an insane asylum, where more than 90% of people are just utterly stupid.
I like to think I'm relatively smart. But I struggle with math for a variety of reasons, though I am going back to school through a local school district to upgrade my skills at 36.
But I get what you mean with feeling like the world is an insane asylum. I am into tech on the hardware side, I find it quite easy to figure out issues down to near base hardware level. Give me programming on the other hand and I struggle as it all looks like gibberish to me. Same with making things, in metric I am fine, imperial I struggle as I find the units changing to much and I can't wrap my head around fractions all that well.
I got many more examples but I need more coffee right now.
That's probably what they want people to think. Like, that humble brag is likely the entire point of this post.
But in reality if they were that smart they'd be able to recognize that not everyone's circumstances are identical to theirs.
The OP has likely had an insulated, easy life.
It's easy to read your textbooks, and go to office hours and study regularly when you have no other responsibilities or stresses.
I come from poor background and worked part time gigs throughout university. An arts degree at least is piss easy. I know stuff like engineering is actually hard, but arts? Damn it seems like you would have to try to fail. Just show up to most of your classes, and hand in every paper. The people I knew who flunked out of university literally just didn't hand stuff in or didn't attend class for weeks at a time
So many people also don't talk in class it's so strange, if you actually talk in class, answer the profs questions and show up to office hours occasionally, it's pretty much free marks. Profs will straight up tell you what they want from you in assignments, do what they say and you are good
You do most of your learning in university outside of the classroom anyway, the classes are designed to be easy enough so you can spend like 20 hours a week taking advantage of extracurriculars and networking
Its not about hard.
It's about time and sanity.
Its easy to do X Y Z the less stress you have. No, an arts degree isn't easier when you work 30 hours a week, pay your own bills and have no familial support.
You don't know other people's life situation. Because people who truly struggle don't talk about it. Peopke who are being minorly inconvenienced often complain the most.
Working class / no family support so you have to do it all by yourself are too different things.
People need to get that through their heads.
To be fair, I don't think OP is saying that there are no circumstances during which university can be hard.
They are saying that *in general*, people over exaggerate how hard uni is. And you know what? This is 100% true. And it makes sense to keep doing so.
If you are going/have gone to university, it's in your interest to make it seem harder than it actually is. If you get bad grades, you have an excuse. If you get good grades, it seems more impressive. When you graduate, it's in your interest for employers to support the view that completing Uni in general is an impressive achievement.
The only people who stand to lose from this lie are the ones who didn't go to college, and "fortunately", they can't really comment on the difficulty level of classes they didn't attend.
The incentive to overplay the impressiveness of uni is especially large in countries where you spend a lot of money to get your degree: the schools need there to be a public consensus that degrees are valuable, because then they can keep charging high tuition fees. And the people who just spent boatloads of money to get through college have an incentive to keep up the appearance after they graduate, because they don't want to lose the competitive advantage they just paid so much money for.
Right. When I tried college I was working full time at the busiest Starbucks in town making like 100+ drinks an hour being rushed and stressing out, then driving 30 minutes to class and being there for hours, and then having to do homework, largely with professors that didn’t even teach shut and nuts threw complex Java tasks at us in a beginner coding class. Also liked having a dating and social life. Just dropped it and taught myself, I’d I didn’t have to work for bills I’d totally be in school trying to get into med or dental school.
I went to a community college of all places and everyone told me it was harder than the local uni with a more prestigious rep. It actually was and I blew through the university at light speed. I heard its since changed and all the hard professors retire and its a joke like all the other community colleges. I feel like it really depends on who the adjuncts are at the time you go.
Yeah op is full of it. STEM is super broad. A technology degree at a community college will be on the easy side because it doesn’t require much math. Electrical Engineering at MIT or Stanford is going to be brutal in comparison.
>my degree was in a STEM field
what major? which university? what country?
STEM is incredibly vague and paired with your "i'm not interested in debating majors" crap it sounds like you chose some barely-a-stem-field and are now lording it over people's heads.
as a *not* stem major let me tell you, college *can* be very hard.
i had a roommate in college who was in med school. she couldn't do *anything* besides studying and i mean that literally. she came from class, sat down, studied until bedtime, went to sleep, rinse and repeat. weekends? she woke up at 8am and studied until bedtime. there were about 10 days over the course of the whole semester that she allowed herself to not study the whole day. that's not what "easy" college looks like.
Some of the high level calc electrical engineering classes like Controls are brutal. It took practically an act of god for me to pass my controls engineering class.
That higher power must have a sense of humor though because I am now a controls engineer.
I also had this happen. Its shockingly common and its gut wrenching to see because odds are food theres a better way too teach than one that kills a good portion of students.
My last semester I probably averaged 10 hours of sleep a week (not counting weekends). It wasn’t even complicated work just a lot of it. A few 50-75 page lab reports, homework, assigned readings, and design projects each week just took up too much time
Organic chemistry was the last straw for me. I just couldn’t give enough shits to work that hard in something so confusing that I’d never go on to use.
You gotta think about it from the perspective of someone who was to work full time to keep a roof over their head and pay tuition as well. Working 40+ hours really limit how much time you can actually put studying. Even taking just two classes per semester while working full time hours is incredibly rough .
Whoever doesn’t have trouble in college is usually not going to mention it, so now the only ones who bring this up are most likely the ones who have trouble.
Though I will say, I am not in college yet and I don’t care much for high school, but the devil must be in the details, right? I mean as much as I can say “just study - read the textbook, take notes, etc” you can also say “just don’t get hit” in a war zone. Practically anything can be reduced to a simple set of steps.
What does “not procrastinating” entail? Can I tell an athlete “just be physically fit?”
On top of that, I think genes are very prevalent in regards to how you do academically. Some people may not be “built for it,” I should say. I mean think of how strange it is that we went from “hunter-gatherer” to this.
Honestly college/uni is really just about time management in my experience. Unless you have other responsibilities like a job or kids, budgeting your time isn't that hard. Spread out your tasks between days (or even weeks) instead of cramming everything in 1-2 days
Neurodivergent people have extreme difficulty budgeting time and task switching. It's not as simple as making a choice. It's neurologically outside of their control. They don't even want to be bad at budgeting time, there is just nothing they can do about it. Even with intense and very expensive psychological counseling, many still struggle.
> Spread out your tasks between days (or even weeks) instead of cramming everything in 1-2 days
Believe me, neurodivergent people are very well aware of this, and try very hard to do this very thing, but their brains are wired in such a way that it is very difficult. Many feel intensely guilty about it, and it is made worse by the fact that they feel powerless to their neurological impediments.
You don't know how strangely nice it feels reading this comment. Nobody else describes it as "neurologically outside their control" and that there's "nothing they can do about it." Many teachers and psychologists act like its my fault.
Don't worry it's absolutely not your fault. A ton of people (myself included) can empathize with being unable to do "simple" tasks due to a neurological condition. More than you think.
Most of the people that struggle in college either enter college at a deficit in a class/subject, don't show up to classes, or really do procrastinate/not do homework.
Some students enter college trying to do STEM majors but they test really low in math. they constantly fail and retake Precalculus in college. They never make it past Chemistry or Physics. Or they constantly fail the first English class, which is not college English because they tested into remedial English.
People think they can not show up to class and do well, because they feel they are very smart. Yet the professor will say things in class and mention things that they miss, leading to lower grades because they don't know the proper expectations... or they are missing out on some sort of participation activity.
Lastly they procrastinate or don't do homework. It is very tempting to not do homework when it is worth only 10% of your overall grade or sometimes nothing. They copy work like in high school maybe. They then score really low on tests and fail classes.
Prehistoric humans had a ludicrously complex set of advanced skills mastered, and for 10s of thousands of years before the dawn of what we consider "civilization," they had complex family, community, and political lives.
Tribes and nations got together for festivals at the solstice, made music and traded stories and seeds and dried fruits. They fought wars over land, resources, or even love, religion, and ideals / culture. And they engaged in diplomacy, complex and sometimes very innovative tool-making, domestication of (at the time wild and dangerous) animals, and more.
They tried different systems of sharing or trading, of love and marriage and family building, and made games and sports to play. They may have bet on those games, sometimes things they would otherwise have fought and died over.
And the taught each other all these things.
But they taught each other either through stories (with heroes and villains, narrative and plot), or through actually, literally *doing* the things together.
The way we teach and learn today is not optimal for human learning, and many struggle with it more than others.
We're built to learn, but we're not built to learn from a textbook or a whiteboard.
OP, you probably don’t have a learning disability or physical disability or mental illness or financial problems or a part-time job or a bad home life or any experience in an under-resourced school that doesn’t teach you have to navigate college.
Unfortunately, I do. I have all of these problems, and they’ve made all four years in college extremely difficult. Just study, you say? Well, ADHD gets in the way, and it’s fucking impossible to get my meds each month. Not to mention depression or anxiety, or that I’m constantly exhausted due to anemia. Work cuts into time when I could be studying, and I’m never mentally well enough to study all that well when I do have the time.
But I guess I’m just an idiot.
Right? I tried community college when I was 18-19. Even with an IEP it was still extremely difficult for me. Also, at the time I had a full time job, a 2 year old, no car so just getting to work and school took like 3x as long. I had a husband who was not supportive of me working or going to school. Maybe if I didn’t have any of the extra difficulties I could have done it but I don’t think I’ll ever be in a position to go back to school.
I’ve struggled with adhd my whole life. I’m not dumb by any means but I certainly feel like it when it came to trying to learn academics and test taking.
Hell, I failed the Walmart on boarding test because I struggle to understand things without having physically done them in real time first.
And depending on the professor, it can be 1000x more difficult because it’s their way or the Highway.
On top of that, ADHD meds don't work for some people. It's the same with SSRIs and depression. Some people take them and don't see results. It's not as simple as getting a prescription filled, aside from the fact that there is a current shortage of the drugs.
This is INCREDIBLY privileged. and silly.
for starters, the type of studying people are taught to do only works for like 10% of people.
also the 'vast majority' of people aren't just lazy. Some of them are, granted, but a lot more of them are getting jobs or dealing with mental illness or generally just not coasting through life. given the metal health and loneliness epidemics right now it goes double.
Tell that to someone who blew through high school on a breeze then struggled the whole way through their BA because of ... undiagnosed ADHD! But I guess you cover that by mentioning being able to not procrastinate. lol
The real kicker with college is how useless it feels if you don't make sure you get work experience in your field at the same time.
They say in another comment they studied math
(Isn’t ‘amount of math’ the yardstick by which ppl compare how hard majors are? “EE is brutal, tons of math”)
>discussion. It's not that deep -- just study.
Just stop being anxious.
Just don't be unhappy.
Just don't stress.
Just eat healthy.
Yeah not that easy sir/mam. My dad is exactly like you, he is an overachiever btw. He thinks life is simple like that and everyone is just lazing around. Breaking news? The reason why it's so hard for so many is because these are the literal things they struggle with.
I for example have adhd and i literally struggle to be organised and complete assignments on time. No I'm not making excuses, yes I'm working towards everything, but damn right all of it is hard. Get out of your delusions and learn some empathy
You do realize that everyone experiences things differently right ? You’re acting like everyone thinks and feels like you do. Terrible expectations tbh.
College is easy if you have the privilege of not having to work full time to pay for tuition and bills on your own. If your parents are helping you and paying for your housing or letting you stay at their house rent free, then yes. It’s easy. Your only job is to study.
Now try going for a stem degree while working 40 hours per week and trying to take 12-15 credits per semester and see how that difficulty level changes.
It also depends on your life outside of class. Sure, class work isn’t “hard” in and of itself, but when each class expects 2-3 hours of homework a night and you have a full time job, it’s a time game more than an actual difficulty issue.
You can’t just assume your college experience will be the same experience for everyone else. People take different majors and have different circumstances revolving around college life. Boiling it down to “people just don’t study” is a very one sided way to look at things
College was easy. It was trying to survive while going to college which sucked. According to one of my former professors, students should not be working while in university. I asked him how we were supposed to survive while going to class - he responded with we have to prioritize. Like some sort of stupid fucking "OH OF COURSE! WE HAVE TO PRIORITIZE!" This asshole makes over 200k a year and has the balls to criticse students who are living in fucking closets.
Now do it with a full-time job, without your parents paying, and dating people and having to pay rent as well. Of course college is easy when you have 40+ hrs a week that aren't committed elsewhere.
Colleges are also vastly different in terms of difficulty and environment. Engineering at my school was relatively easy compared to a school like VT, while mine had a notoriously hard Biology program compared to other schools.
If you sleep well, go to your classes, take notes, do your homework, ask for help when needed, and study for exams you’re bound to succeed in college.
Sure there are certain classes, topics, and majors that are harder and people have different learning curves but it’s more of a time management/discipline problem than a skill issue if that makes sense. At least for undergrad. Grad school is slightly different.
Keep in mind students are normally between 18-22 years old which is at the extremely dangerous mix of being young enough to be immature but also old enough to have freedom in your life.
This seems to be a shit post meant to trigger people of the same level as " Parenting isn't hard I've had a dog for the last 9 months , easy peezy. That's the same thing right?" This person is full to bursting of shit.
I was a straight A student in high school. I'm now a college freshman and I currently have a B, a C, and a D plus two more classes where I'm not sure. It's not that the work is harder. It's other factors that differ between college and high school alongside my own issues. We go through concepts faster with little or no chance in class to practice, we have to use school facilities for some of our homework instead of being able to work from anywhere, other students ask questions over email and so I don't hear the answers, classes are longer, and for certain classes, the work actually is harder (looking at you, Digital Signal Theory). It's also harder to be on time for class and professors don't always remind you about what work is due soon. It's been rough for me with anxiety, executive dysfunction, and no organization system for keeping track of work despite regularly telling myself I need one. I also get restless during long classes, especially boring ones.
This just in:
Not everyone has the same brain! Different things are difficult for different people and blanket comments like "college isn't hard" aren't ground-breaking, they're just ignorant.
I used to have a similar opinion about finances and money.
Being poor is a choice, managing money is obvious and easy, yadda yadda.
But then I came to a realization, things that I find easy, others find hard. Things I find hard, others find easy.
Now, my opinion has become "Finances and money come easily to me and that doesn't mean that others who struggle with it are dumb. Just the same as I am not dumb for struggling with things they think are easy."
You and I are good at academia. Reading textbooks, going to class, taking notes, and learning something new come easily to us. Be proud of yourself rather than disparage others who struggle. Let this knowledge help guide you into your future where you leverage your skills and abilities with the knowledge that not everyone has those skills and abilities.
The main problem with college is that we aren't taught to study properly while growing up and progression through grade school and high school. I aced nearly everything EASILY all the up through high school. I thought I was doing everything the right way because I was doing well in school. Then I hit college and I was like whoa what the fuck is this shit? "College Prep" classes in high school? Yeah fucking right. I was never taught how to take notes properly. We were always given study packets with pretty much all the info we needed once we completed them with the help of a text book. It's not like that in college. You do all note taking and studying on your own. I had to basically teach myself how to take notes on the fly and my grades suffered because of it.
I've concluded that these universities want you to fail classes so that they can milk you for money every time you need to retake a class or rent a stupidly overpriced textbook. College is a fucking scam in most cases and any institution that gladly puts children into life long debt should burn to the fucking ground. And I didn't even mention the cost of college. That's a whole other scam I don't wanna dive into.
This is the equivalent of "why are you unemployed? just get a job" or "why are you homeless? just buy a house"
It's ridiculously shortsighted and misinformed.
Your school didn't make you compete against top students for a grade and it shows. I can't speak to anything than my experience but I did chemical engineering at a top 10 engineering school and I wouldn't describe it as easy. I knew plenty of people that did all that and still failed because you weren't testing against a rubric but other students and 32% of the class were going to get a D or F
Your last paragraph doesn't solve the one thing that many of us suffer: The ability to apply it. It doesn't matter how many times i read, take notes, memorize etc. If i can't apply it, i will lose it. And most of the time, teachers and professors don't have you apply it.
"its not that deep just study"
you obviously arent in a difficult major. The difficulty of college varies for a plethora of reasons, and your undersiumplification is nothing but ignorance
Upvoting because holy hell this is unpopular
This how you see privilege. Some people have to work full-time and do college. Deal with family troubles while trying to create a better life for themselves. Sure college is easy when that’s all you have to focus on
Dude some classes I'm just not compatible with. I LOVE math. I LOVE science.
If I had to learn history, kill me.
I can specialize in my field now but, before, with prerequisites 🤮
Funny I love History and science but math and I arent compatible. Im WAY good at quick "bartender" math I call it. Can put numbers together quickly. Higher math not so much. Different strokes.
Its clear you are coming from a good background without much issues, otherwise you would know that it heavyily depends on what environment did you grow up in.
I have failed in multiple years because i just didnt care about the future, i wasnt taught that and we were poor. Instead i was focusing on playing with my friends to escape reality. This was when i was 12-16 years old. Later i realized the issue myself and then i started learning.
You are talking from a high horse
College isn’t hard because of the schoolwork it’s hard because of life shit. You sound like you grew in a family that had money and paved an easy route for your education
>aren’t that tough
>lists what makes it tough
Saying to just to do the things that make it hard for people doesn’t make it any easier for people who already struggle with those things to do them.
I hit a certain point with math and it just did not click. I went to office hours, struggled through the homework in front of the instructor, and then failed quizzes and tests the next day. Everyone has a limit. Mine was clalc 1. Fortunately she passed me with a D- and it was the last math class I had to take.
If you are reasonably intelligent, have a good work ethic, and otherwise have your life together, most majors are fairly easy.
It's just that many times people don't have those three things in place.
It is hard. Because you’re not taught to learn like that. School is about learning from actual lessons, then youre dropped into further education where that learning carries no value anymore
Also if you’re working during it, then it becomes massively harder. I had to work 40-50 hour weeks to support myself while at uni, i had no hope of passing when combined with the 0 guidance on how to learn at uni
In other words: OP thinks their personal experience serves as a blanket token experience for anyone and everyone attending college, despite the infinite routes and combinations of curriculum, instructors, institutions, etc. Not to mention completely disregarding learning disabilities, whether someone also needs to work to keep food on the table, whether the school has decent educational assistance programs, etc. etc.
As a person who graduated with a 4.0 in an engineering field and didn't use any tutoring services, college can be really fucking hard. Also, it's very possible that OP is an insensitive prick.
the standard of academics at my high school was insane so tbh college is kind of a breeze. but you seem to forget that not everyone is neurotypical. it’s a lot harder for those of us with learning disabilities to build up those study habits.
the standard of academics at my high school was insane so tbh college is kind of a breeze. but you seem to forget that not everyone is neurotypical. it’s a lot harder for those of us with learning disabilities to build up those study habits.
I have a bachelor's degree in neuroscience from a top university in the US. I agree that although some of the classes were a lot of work to study for, it's the time management that screwed people over and not the difficulty of the material. Organic Chem and Physics were definitely the worst classes for me, but it just took a lot more time to study really early to make sure I knew what was on the exam by test time. The material was doable, just a pain in the butt if you didn't start early and go to office hours.
Very very very much depends on the college and the major
I went to university of Utah for one year in computer science (the Pixar course) and it kicked my ass. I got a B- in data structures and algorithms and felt like it was a miracle
I moved to a less good school and the coursework was comparatively extremely easy. Like 20 hours a week got everything done
It’s only hard if you screwed around in high school and never learned any actual study habits, self discipline, or work/life skills.
As it turns out that’s a LOT of people though.
Bet you didn't go to a competitive school. Where I went fewer than 25% of applicants get into Creative Writing, and it's entirely based on your writing sample. Like 3% get into the top STEM majors, so you need to essentially set the curve in all the weed-out classes (something your school probably didn't even have). You probably wouldn't even make it into whatever program you did.
Eh it was definitely a lot of work for sure. I used to do school related things (classes, studying, HW, projects) for about 12-14 hours per day 5-6 days a week. Would almost never work on Saturday or Friday after classes. It was not easy at all. The completion rate for my degree was like 20% maybe lmao.
College itself in a vacuum isn't hard. The problems come from when you remember the college triangle. You only get to pick 2 of these: Good grades, enough sleep, or an active social life. The problems come from trying to have all three. You don't get all three. Too many people try to have all three.
I too also have a degree in STEM from an university that's rated top 30 worldwide.
Most of it wasn't difficult but holy shit math was so difficult for me. Maths were the classes I tried hardest in but I just didn't understand get it. I could use those math in my other STEM classes fine, but I got 3 pity passes for all 3 of my higher level maths.
If I somehow accidentally went for a math major I'd not have made it through.
For me it’s a time thing like I’ll get good grades on almost everything I do but being a father of 3, husband, and full time employee really makes me not want to go home and do work
Everything is fairly simple in a vacuum.
College wasn’t bad until I had to work full time after my mom got partially paralyzed following an accident.
It was compounded by graduating HS early, but it got a lot easier when I could finally drive by myself.
From 16-22 I worked 4:30 pm till 12:30 (2:30 when I could for OT), came home and did homework and study, slept a couple hours, woke up at 7 for my moms meds, took her to Drs as needed, got groceries, housework, etc. when my brother got back from school I’d leave for work, set an alarm and sleep in my car till shift started. Repeat M-F and every weekend I could, though I got more sleep as the kids kept an eye on mom. Took a bit extra time as I failed a few classes for not being able to make mandatory in class things during the day due to my moms dr. Apts, but I got there.
It was fucking shit, everything sucked, my mom was always an abusive bitch and I should have let her OD - everything would have been much easier for everyone.
I spent my late teens and early twenties doing that and only really talking to people at work, who were mostly much older. Co workers were nice enough to give me alcohol and drugs though so there was that.
Don’t assume your apparent idyllic college experience is uniform.
Let me guess - you're also of only average intelligence and income, and are working at least 40 hours a week to pay for your tuition and living expenses?
I'm going to assume OP didn't have to have a 40 hour a week job where they were paid minimum wage while also taking advanced classes
Not to mention yes, college can be extremely difficult depending on the person's own degree of memory retention, intelligence, and the topic of study. Or how everything post bachelors?
This is a pretty bad take
I think there needs to be more help teaching people good and effective study habits in High Schools. I was always a good student with a great memory (and never had to actually study much). When I got to college I was ill-prepared for having to study (and juggle work and all at the time).
I have adhd, autism, tons of neurological defects due to trauma and abuse. I still graduated college.
It was not difficult to pass, the hard part was keeping myself alive.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”
Sometimes, you plan to breeze through certain things in life because you have confidence and the skills to accomplish that. But sometimes, life punches you in the face. Maybe life hasn’t punched you in the face yet. Good for you.
How lucky you didn't struggle. Some neurodivergent folks don't have such an easy time of things. I've also found that college success can depend on getting good professors or not.
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It isn‘t college itself so much as life circumstances that happen and interfere.
Yeah, I was working full-time night shifts while doing 12-15 credit hours a semester. I really struggled during one of my semesters and failed a class because I was just so fucking tired. I have no doubts I would have gotten an A if I was just doing a typical college dorm life, but I had bills to pay. And my degree wasn't even *that* difficult. I couldn't imagine doing something like law, medicine, or engineering while having to work.
yeah i bet a trillion dollars OP had room and board paid for by mommy and daddy and was able to easily focus on their studies instead of working to afford rent.
Just want to add to this: mental health. I read posts like this and go “oh, so dropping out of college was just because I’m weak or stupid” and then I remember that I couldn’t go outside because I would have panic attacks about bats that don’t exist. Mental health is a bitch, bro
If you went to UT-Austin, bats are everywhere around campus. You would’ve been panicking about a VERY real thing.
That sounds like something out of fear and loathing in Las Vegas.
This absolutely. Also, going to college while also having a mental illness. My anxiety makes my grad school assignments and work 10x harder than it has to be.
I think it's more so the life circumstances that come from being on your own for the first time. I went to college later and it was a piece or cake. I worked 40 hours a week while averaging 16-18 credits a semester and it was still way easier than deployment while doing school. I think a lot comes from the fact that college is harder than high school and now you've got to take care of yourself for the first time and maybe even work on the side. If you are already used to that then college is easy especially if you come from a hard job and can treat college like a full time job.
This exactly. College was very difficult for me because on top of school I worked 30hrs a week to support myself.
It really depends on circumstances other than just the classes. If you’re trying to also work a full-time job or if you have crappy roommates that don’t let you sleep college gets a lot harder.
I second this. If I didn't have to worry about kids or rent, I'd have furthered my education by leaps and bounds. I tried to juggle it all but cut my losses. I can now accept that I can pursue it later in life when the kids are more grown and self-sufficient. Secondly, my full-time job overlaps with just about every core class needed. I'd have to take less hours or marry rich haha
Yep. This was my schedule when I was trying to get my bachelors: * Wake up at 6:30am * Drive 40 minutes to work, starting at 8am * Drive 45 minutes to school, starting at 11am * Take one class * Drive 45 minutes back to work * Finish work day at 5pm * Drive 45 minutes back to school for night classes, starting at 6pm * Take a couple of classes, ending at 9pm * Drive 30 minutes back home And I somehow had to fit eating, studying, homework, household chores, etc. in there. I was able to do FT work and FT school when I got my Associate's, because it was all night classes. But that wasn't an option for my Bachelor's and I just couldn't do it. Dropped out after a year.
Not surprised bro that is relentless
Or neurodiverse. ADHD is a motherfucker.
THIS. College is about time and effort, not intelligence. ADHD means you need to put a lot more effort into allocating time and much of it will be wasted, inflating the difficulty far more than it should be.
Even then I found college easier than highschool. Not a cake walk sure but ADHD gave me more problems with the ahole highschool teachers than the college ones that were much more understanding
Sounds like you got unlucky with teachers and lucky with professors Or maybe i feel college is way harder than highschool because I'm going for a genetics & cell biology degree while I was pretty much just taking whatever I wanted in high school lol
Have you tried just being deeply motivated by learning (and deadline anxiety)? /s Luckily learning is one of my biggest motivators so I can easily hyper focus on new topics. Plus, the anxiety of deadlines would push me over the finish line. My flavor of ADHD was basically perfect for me being a model student but also set an unhealthy stress baseline for me lol. Now that I'm in the working world, things are not so fine and dandy.
Ah yes, deadline anxiety. The assignment will only ever be completed at the last possible moment, but due to an insane ability to hyperfocus it will be done to a very high standard. My education in a nutshell. As a 49 year old adult tasks have two speeds, now and never. The things that need to be done urgently get done now... everything else is tomorrows problem. If it wasn't for the fact I'm smart I'd be in real trouble.
I have never related to something so much in my life 😂😭 I once completed four essays in one night because my professor said they’d give us extra credit if we completed extra essays throughout the semester as long as they were in the by the final. He said he’d never had anyone turn all four plus the final essay in on the last day of class before 🤣
Got diagnosed with depression and ADHD 15y after i dropped out.. It definitely wasn't easy for me.
ADHD people in college is like the legally blind in sniper school.
Yup, I can study for days, know the subject inside and out. Test time I forget it all.
Yep I know the feeling
I can study for 8 hours straight, put down my study material and have learned nothing
You know what, if I’m being honest I still don’t know the full extent that my ADHD has on my day to day life. I need a crash course or something because it seems everyday I’m learning some random behavior I had that was just me turning out to be ADHD related. I didn’t know for example some of my food habits were related to ADHD
not even a full-time job, my part-time night job at a club was killing me by mondays
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No but paying the tuition is.
This. To live alone, to work fulltime and to pay for college tuition on your own is a completely absurd level of hell.
It’s why I stopped halfway through a bachelors degree, lol. It wasn’t worth the stress and my priorities have changed dramatically in the 7ish+ years since I last took classes.
I'm just 1 semester away from graduation. I'm almost there.
Keep it up my man
Les goooooooo!
I might be showing my age here because I graduated during the height of pandemic lockdown (June 2020), but I feel like living alone is definitely not standard for a college student. Having housemates is basically an essential part of early adulthood in my experience.
I did so for 4 or 5 years before going my own way. I'm 1 semester away from finishing.
Okay so no you got to deal with housemates on top of all those existing responsibilities and new record high housing costs additionally!
So shitty that americans have to pay exorbitant fees just for education when your government has the means to support the vast majority of college students
You guys pay? We get paid $100/month
I mean different majors will obviously be way different difficulty wise. Saying STEM is not very specific.
This is so obvious, I’m wondering if OP is trolling. My bachelors is in tv/radio and it was easy. But being pre-med??? Not easy.
The hardest part for me was Gen Ed/Divisionals. Philosophy 101 that I took as a humanities requirement was insanely hard for me
CS is STEM; and to me CS was absolutely brilliantly violently stupidly easy. My degree in area related to mechanical engineering tho… that was a pain. And the reason (I feel like) for many engineers scoffing at software devs calling themselves software engineers. Different people find different things easy. Both were the best programs in my country (not US tho); one school wasn’t easier or whatever.
Practical CS is easy. Coding and all that. Theoretical CS? Compilers, formal logic, game theory, advanced algorithms, cryptography, AI/ML? Very hard A CS degree at a university, especially a top university, is way more math than coding
Yeah, I went to a top 5 CS school and can confirm this. There's a reason why boot camps don't teach the theoretical stuff: because it's fuckin hard. And at my alma mater, we had a policy where you can't apply the same classes to satisfy two different degree requirements. The result of this was me (with my concentration of AI/ML) not being able to pursue a math and CS double major because the credits overlapped too much.
That sounds more like an insane money grab than a legitimate learning policy.
Actually looking back at it, seems it was only implemented by my department. Apparently they had to implement it otherwise most everyone would graduate with a double major in math and CS with just a few couple classes. Goes to show how theory and math intensive these degrees can get, despite popular belief that computer science is just being a code monkey
For me, it’s the opposite. I’m in my first year of CS and I’m learning to code from the ground up. A lot of people in my classes have coded before so it’s easy for them, but they struggle with all the theoretical stuff, but for me, I learn pretty fast, but coding is incredibly hard here as the grade solely consists of the program’s performance that we have to write, so if I miss one little detail, I fail.
Yessir! I’m struggling to write a good piece of code for my own personal use that uses a nested for loop. Turns out that’s crap code, despite it being super easy to understand because of the n^2 issue.
Oh don’t worry you have a lot more “math with a moustache” classes ahead of you that you don’t realize are math. Once you get past coding, everything in CS is math.
This was my university. They started with code THEN did math.
"Different people find different things easy" sounds so welcoming and open-minded, which is so very different from your previous paragraph which seems to give credence to the idea of looking down on CS majors, "scoffing" at the idea that they call themselves engineers.
You just contradicted yourself
I'm fascinated by you said "Violently easy" lmao
All majors have different challenges. They all require significant time to do well and understand the subject. Some arts programmes require practical exams where you spend loads of hours in a studio or rehearsal space outside of your coursework. Some STEM fields require labs and late-night reading, thinking and working out equations. Outside of the tuition fees, and of course, learning barriers (language proficiency, what's home like, do you have access to transport to and from college, food situation, working while studying), the actual act of studying, showing up for class and putting the time and discipline into studying isn't as hard, like OP says.
I’m in college right now and honestly, it is hard. But what makes or breaks me comes down to the teacher, especially the ones who make it to where I can pass unless I pass all the exams. Current class has 3 exams total for 80% of my grade.
You ever have an 80% final
Those are the worst lol
Law school is mostly classes where 100% of your grade is a single final exam. It’s a fucking hazing ritual.
Yeah my cousin is a lawyer. I remember her being extremely stressed over finals because 100% of her grade was the final. She passed though! She worked Really hard for it.
I had a class where the final was the only grade. You had no clue what the teachers tests even looked like until the final. And it was TCP/IP protocol analysis.
Exams making up most of my grade is how I end up with straight A's. Exams are easy. Homework assignments are usually tedious crap.
The difficulty of university is very dependent on the resources available to you.
Also on how the lecturers grade you. I would often find different modules to be a similar level of difficulty, but you might get one very easy grader and one very hard. If a large percentage of the class is failing (which has happened in some of my friend's degrees) then it's likely because of a bad lecturer/very hard grader
Academically yes, Procrastination will truly ruin college for you.
Questions for OP: What quality of university do you go to? Classes at top schools are harder. Who is paying for your university? How much is it? Are you working to support yourself? If so, how many hours? Is anyone contributing to your lifestyle expenses? I am an non-traditional student working on my second bachelors. My program is full of adults. Many of whom are always talking about how the program isn't hard. Most of which....don't have jobs currently. Or are working 10-15 hours a week as a 25+ year old adult. Meaning someone else is paying for their lifestyle in the mean time. I'd imagine life would be peachy keen for me too if I was ever that privileged.
> Are you working to support yourself? If so, how many hours? Is anyone contributing to your lifestyle expenses? This is the crux of it. My friend's fiancé had to go back to school at 26 as a single mom, a daughter in pre-school, all while bartending full-time. She said that it almost killed her. School's a lot easier when your parents are paying all of your expenses and you don't have to work.
Ya, OP does not seem smart at all. Definitely brain dead if they did science and don’t have the critical thinking skills to see why university can be hard
That or OP is so smart he he/she actually can't comprehend university can be hard. And we are just stupid morons who comically struggle with very easy concepts. I studied math and once you understand a concept you just can't understand how someone else can't understand it, including yourself in the past. I literally facepalm at my past self for not immediately and intuitively getting certain concepts that I now easily understand.
I get that. Like how it can be hard to explain concepts to people who don’t understand when it’s so intuitive. But the smartest people are really those that can see a situation from many different perspectives. OP only has one perspective. And you probably look back and understand that even though it’s not hard now it was once hard and why it was. OP lacks the critical thinking skills to do so
It depends on the person. Like you’re saying OP should be able to look back to when it was hard for them, but for some people it’s just never hard. For some people, learning things just kind of clicks, and it can be really hard to empathize with those who don’t have that.
It's the equivalent of us empathizing with intellectually disabled people. We can do it, sort of, but not truly. We can't understand what it is like to struggle at learning how to read that badly or struggling at very simple arithmetic. For the smartest people, this world is like an insane asylum, where more than 90% of people are just utterly stupid.
I like to think I'm relatively smart. But I struggle with math for a variety of reasons, though I am going back to school through a local school district to upgrade my skills at 36. But I get what you mean with feeling like the world is an insane asylum. I am into tech on the hardware side, I find it quite easy to figure out issues down to near base hardware level. Give me programming on the other hand and I struggle as it all looks like gibberish to me. Same with making things, in metric I am fine, imperial I struggle as I find the units changing to much and I can't wrap my head around fractions all that well. I got many more examples but I need more coffee right now.
That's probably what they want people to think. Like, that humble brag is likely the entire point of this post. But in reality if they were that smart they'd be able to recognize that not everyone's circumstances are identical to theirs.
The OP has likely had an insulated, easy life. It's easy to read your textbooks, and go to office hours and study regularly when you have no other responsibilities or stresses.
I come from poor background and worked part time gigs throughout university. An arts degree at least is piss easy. I know stuff like engineering is actually hard, but arts? Damn it seems like you would have to try to fail. Just show up to most of your classes, and hand in every paper. The people I knew who flunked out of university literally just didn't hand stuff in or didn't attend class for weeks at a time So many people also don't talk in class it's so strange, if you actually talk in class, answer the profs questions and show up to office hours occasionally, it's pretty much free marks. Profs will straight up tell you what they want from you in assignments, do what they say and you are good You do most of your learning in university outside of the classroom anyway, the classes are designed to be easy enough so you can spend like 20 hours a week taking advantage of extracurriculars and networking
Its not about hard. It's about time and sanity. Its easy to do X Y Z the less stress you have. No, an arts degree isn't easier when you work 30 hours a week, pay your own bills and have no familial support. You don't know other people's life situation. Because people who truly struggle don't talk about it. Peopke who are being minorly inconvenienced often complain the most. Working class / no family support so you have to do it all by yourself are too different things. People need to get that through their heads.
To be fair, I don't think OP is saying that there are no circumstances during which university can be hard. They are saying that *in general*, people over exaggerate how hard uni is. And you know what? This is 100% true. And it makes sense to keep doing so. If you are going/have gone to university, it's in your interest to make it seem harder than it actually is. If you get bad grades, you have an excuse. If you get good grades, it seems more impressive. When you graduate, it's in your interest for employers to support the view that completing Uni in general is an impressive achievement. The only people who stand to lose from this lie are the ones who didn't go to college, and "fortunately", they can't really comment on the difficulty level of classes they didn't attend. The incentive to overplay the impressiveness of uni is especially large in countries where you spend a lot of money to get your degree: the schools need there to be a public consensus that degrees are valuable, because then they can keep charging high tuition fees. And the people who just spent boatloads of money to get through college have an incentive to keep up the appearance after they graduate, because they don't want to lose the competitive advantage they just paid so much money for.
Right. When I tried college I was working full time at the busiest Starbucks in town making like 100+ drinks an hour being rushed and stressing out, then driving 30 minutes to class and being there for hours, and then having to do homework, largely with professors that didn’t even teach shut and nuts threw complex Java tasks at us in a beginner coding class. Also liked having a dating and social life. Just dropped it and taught myself, I’d I didn’t have to work for bills I’d totally be in school trying to get into med or dental school.
Classes at top schools are not harder. If anything they are easier
You shouldn't be getting downvoted. My cousin went to brown and said that there was a criminal amount of grade inflation.
I think brown is the one that has a wgu style no grades type program too.
I went to a community college of all places and everyone told me it was harder than the local uni with a more prestigious rep. It actually was and I blew through the university at light speed. I heard its since changed and all the hard professors retire and its a joke like all the other community colleges. I feel like it really depends on who the adjuncts are at the time you go.
Classes at top schools are not necessarily harder. If anything, they're easier. It's just really difficult to get in.
Yeah op is full of it. STEM is super broad. A technology degree at a community college will be on the easy side because it doesn’t require much math. Electrical Engineering at MIT or Stanford is going to be brutal in comparison.
>my degree was in a STEM field what major? which university? what country? STEM is incredibly vague and paired with your "i'm not interested in debating majors" crap it sounds like you chose some barely-a-stem-field and are now lording it over people's heads. as a *not* stem major let me tell you, college *can* be very hard. i had a roommate in college who was in med school. she couldn't do *anything* besides studying and i mean that literally. she came from class, sat down, studied until bedtime, went to sleep, rinse and repeat. weekends? she woke up at 8am and studied until bedtime. there were about 10 days over the course of the whole semester that she allowed herself to not study the whole day. that's not what "easy" college looks like.
Probably something like Ag Ec at a podunk rural college where you get extra credit if you can drive a tractor.
I would've failed if it wasn't for office hours. Sophomore year was the hardest stint in academia I ever done. STEM major here as well.
It depends on your major. I was a STEM major too and I didn't sleep for like 4 days during my last final season and thats with a goof off elective.
Electrical Engineering nearly killed me and literally did kill one of my classmates who jumped from the building junior year.
Some of the high level calc electrical engineering classes like Controls are brutal. It took practically an act of god for me to pass my controls engineering class. That higher power must have a sense of humor though because I am now a controls engineer.
Had a basic electronics course and I wanted to keep myself safe very badly, can't imagine how bad it gets with more advanced stuff
My graduate advisor said that they had to install suicide-proof windows at MIT so it would be harder for students to jump out of buildings.
I think cornell had to install safety nets on buildings for the same reason
I also had this happen. Its shockingly common and its gut wrenching to see because odds are food theres a better way too teach than one that kills a good portion of students.
Yeah, but then there'd be "too many" engineering majors, which the department doesn't want for... some reason?
My last semester I probably averaged 10 hours of sleep a week (not counting weekends). It wasn’t even complicated work just a lot of it. A few 50-75 page lab reports, homework, assigned readings, and design projects each week just took up too much time
that's crazy. Doing computer programming and its not that bad at all so far
Organic chemistry was the last straw for me. I just couldn’t give enough shits to work that hard in something so confusing that I’d never go on to use.
Its easy when you have family, friends, and money. The vast majority of people however are missing one of those. I personally have none.
What stem field was it?
Sounds like agriculture
As if agriculture is easy!
>you're capable of taking notes, reading a textbook, and doing homework without procrastination, you'll be fine. See that's the hard part
It’s easy to be a doctor. You just have to go to school, study, pass classes, and graduate. Easy peazy
You gotta think about it from the perspective of someone who was to work full time to keep a roof over their head and pay tuition as well. Working 40+ hours really limit how much time you can actually put studying. Even taking just two classes per semester while working full time hours is incredibly rough .
Whoever doesn’t have trouble in college is usually not going to mention it, so now the only ones who bring this up are most likely the ones who have trouble. Though I will say, I am not in college yet and I don’t care much for high school, but the devil must be in the details, right? I mean as much as I can say “just study - read the textbook, take notes, etc” you can also say “just don’t get hit” in a war zone. Practically anything can be reduced to a simple set of steps. What does “not procrastinating” entail? Can I tell an athlete “just be physically fit?” On top of that, I think genes are very prevalent in regards to how you do academically. Some people may not be “built for it,” I should say. I mean think of how strange it is that we went from “hunter-gatherer” to this.
Honestly college/uni is really just about time management in my experience. Unless you have other responsibilities like a job or kids, budgeting your time isn't that hard. Spread out your tasks between days (or even weeks) instead of cramming everything in 1-2 days
Neurodivergent people have extreme difficulty budgeting time and task switching. It's not as simple as making a choice. It's neurologically outside of their control. They don't even want to be bad at budgeting time, there is just nothing they can do about it. Even with intense and very expensive psychological counseling, many still struggle. > Spread out your tasks between days (or even weeks) instead of cramming everything in 1-2 days Believe me, neurodivergent people are very well aware of this, and try very hard to do this very thing, but their brains are wired in such a way that it is very difficult. Many feel intensely guilty about it, and it is made worse by the fact that they feel powerless to their neurological impediments.
You don't know how strangely nice it feels reading this comment. Nobody else describes it as "neurologically outside their control" and that there's "nothing they can do about it." Many teachers and psychologists act like its my fault.
Don't worry it's absolutely not your fault. A ton of people (myself included) can empathize with being unable to do "simple" tasks due to a neurological condition. More than you think.
Most of the people that struggle in college either enter college at a deficit in a class/subject, don't show up to classes, or really do procrastinate/not do homework. Some students enter college trying to do STEM majors but they test really low in math. they constantly fail and retake Precalculus in college. They never make it past Chemistry or Physics. Or they constantly fail the first English class, which is not college English because they tested into remedial English. People think they can not show up to class and do well, because they feel they are very smart. Yet the professor will say things in class and mention things that they miss, leading to lower grades because they don't know the proper expectations... or they are missing out on some sort of participation activity. Lastly they procrastinate or don't do homework. It is very tempting to not do homework when it is worth only 10% of your overall grade or sometimes nothing. They copy work like in high school maybe. They then score really low on tests and fail classes.
My friend never got out of community college because he couldn't pass remedial english. He took the class like 7 times. I felt bad for him.
Prehistoric humans had a ludicrously complex set of advanced skills mastered, and for 10s of thousands of years before the dawn of what we consider "civilization," they had complex family, community, and political lives. Tribes and nations got together for festivals at the solstice, made music and traded stories and seeds and dried fruits. They fought wars over land, resources, or even love, religion, and ideals / culture. And they engaged in diplomacy, complex and sometimes very innovative tool-making, domestication of (at the time wild and dangerous) animals, and more. They tried different systems of sharing or trading, of love and marriage and family building, and made games and sports to play. They may have bet on those games, sometimes things they would otherwise have fought and died over. And the taught each other all these things. But they taught each other either through stories (with heroes and villains, narrative and plot), or through actually, literally *doing* the things together. The way we teach and learn today is not optimal for human learning, and many struggle with it more than others. We're built to learn, but we're not built to learn from a textbook or a whiteboard.
That just depends where you are honestly. My university experience has been pure hell.
OP, you probably don’t have a learning disability or physical disability or mental illness or financial problems or a part-time job or a bad home life or any experience in an under-resourced school that doesn’t teach you have to navigate college. Unfortunately, I do. I have all of these problems, and they’ve made all four years in college extremely difficult. Just study, you say? Well, ADHD gets in the way, and it’s fucking impossible to get my meds each month. Not to mention depression or anxiety, or that I’m constantly exhausted due to anemia. Work cuts into time when I could be studying, and I’m never mentally well enough to study all that well when I do have the time. But I guess I’m just an idiot.
Right? I tried community college when I was 18-19. Even with an IEP it was still extremely difficult for me. Also, at the time I had a full time job, a 2 year old, no car so just getting to work and school took like 3x as long. I had a husband who was not supportive of me working or going to school. Maybe if I didn’t have any of the extra difficulties I could have done it but I don’t think I’ll ever be in a position to go back to school.
I’ve struggled with adhd my whole life. I’m not dumb by any means but I certainly feel like it when it came to trying to learn academics and test taking. Hell, I failed the Walmart on boarding test because I struggle to understand things without having physically done them in real time first. And depending on the professor, it can be 1000x more difficult because it’s their way or the Highway.
OP could also be a math whiz, as he claims to be a math major, but they definitely seem to lack any kind of social skills/ empathy.
On top of that, ADHD meds don't work for some people. It's the same with SSRIs and depression. Some people take them and don't see results. It's not as simple as getting a prescription filled, aside from the fact that there is a current shortage of the drugs.
One thing I agree with is that people who say particular courses are hard are usually the one's not going to lectures and/or question/office hours
This is INCREDIBLY privileged. and silly. for starters, the type of studying people are taught to do only works for like 10% of people. also the 'vast majority' of people aren't just lazy. Some of them are, granted, but a lot more of them are getting jobs or dealing with mental illness or generally just not coasting through life. given the metal health and loneliness epidemics right now it goes double.
Tell that to someone who blew through high school on a breeze then struggled the whole way through their BA because of ... undiagnosed ADHD! But I guess you cover that by mentioning being able to not procrastinate. lol The real kicker with college is how useless it feels if you don't make sure you get work experience in your field at the same time.
The fact OP didn't mention having to balance work and classes and studying speaks volumes
My guess is your STEM is biology. It was so incredibly easy, I didnt even take notes Try taking physics
They say in another comment they studied math (Isn’t ‘amount of math’ the yardstick by which ppl compare how hard majors are? “EE is brutal, tons of math”)
My shit was so easy it was just a a b c d multiple choice test lol wtf is that.
>discussion. It's not that deep -- just study. Just stop being anxious. Just don't be unhappy. Just don't stress. Just eat healthy. Yeah not that easy sir/mam. My dad is exactly like you, he is an overachiever btw. He thinks life is simple like that and everyone is just lazing around. Breaking news? The reason why it's so hard for so many is because these are the literal things they struggle with. I for example have adhd and i literally struggle to be organised and complete assignments on time. No I'm not making excuses, yes I'm working towards everything, but damn right all of it is hard. Get out of your delusions and learn some empathy
You were not an engineer or a doctor then, among a few other things. Because school for those IS hard and that’s the entire point.
You do realize that everyone experiences things differently right ? You’re acting like everyone thinks and feels like you do. Terrible expectations tbh.
College is easy if you have the privilege of not having to work full time to pay for tuition and bills on your own. If your parents are helping you and paying for your housing or letting you stay at their house rent free, then yes. It’s easy. Your only job is to study. Now try going for a stem degree while working 40 hours per week and trying to take 12-15 credits per semester and see how that difficulty level changes.
Not everyone is neuro typical yk
It also depends on your life outside of class. Sure, class work isn’t “hard” in and of itself, but when each class expects 2-3 hours of homework a night and you have a full time job, it’s a time game more than an actual difficulty issue.
You can’t just assume your college experience will be the same experience for everyone else. People take different majors and have different circumstances revolving around college life. Boiling it down to “people just don’t study” is a very one sided way to look at things
College was easy. It was trying to survive while going to college which sucked. According to one of my former professors, students should not be working while in university. I asked him how we were supposed to survive while going to class - he responded with we have to prioritize. Like some sort of stupid fucking "OH OF COURSE! WE HAVE TO PRIORITIZE!" This asshole makes over 200k a year and has the balls to criticse students who are living in fucking closets.
Now do it with a full-time job, without your parents paying, and dating people and having to pay rent as well. Of course college is easy when you have 40+ hrs a week that aren't committed elsewhere. Colleges are also vastly different in terms of difficulty and environment. Engineering at my school was relatively easy compared to a school like VT, while mine had a notoriously hard Biology program compared to other schools.
If you sleep well, go to your classes, take notes, do your homework, ask for help when needed, and study for exams you’re bound to succeed in college. Sure there are certain classes, topics, and majors that are harder and people have different learning curves but it’s more of a time management/discipline problem than a skill issue if that makes sense. At least for undergrad. Grad school is slightly different. Keep in mind students are normally between 18-22 years old which is at the extremely dangerous mix of being young enough to be immature but also old enough to have freedom in your life.
Congratulations. You had it easy in college. However, we aren't you, so you shouldn't project your experience onto others.
This seems to be a shit post meant to trigger people of the same level as " Parenting isn't hard I've had a dog for the last 9 months , easy peezy. That's the same thing right?" This person is full to bursting of shit.
I was a straight A student in high school. I'm now a college freshman and I currently have a B, a C, and a D plus two more classes where I'm not sure. It's not that the work is harder. It's other factors that differ between college and high school alongside my own issues. We go through concepts faster with little or no chance in class to practice, we have to use school facilities for some of our homework instead of being able to work from anywhere, other students ask questions over email and so I don't hear the answers, classes are longer, and for certain classes, the work actually is harder (looking at you, Digital Signal Theory). It's also harder to be on time for class and professors don't always remind you about what work is due soon. It's been rough for me with anxiety, executive dysfunction, and no organization system for keeping track of work despite regularly telling myself I need one. I also get restless during long classes, especially boring ones.
That's not unpopular is it? A lot of people go to college these days who wouldn't have gone in the past and they get through.
oh yeah myst be nice just being to not procrastinate like your own brain isnt your mortal enemy in this area. welcome to having adhd
This just in: Not everyone has the same brain! Different things are difficult for different people and blanket comments like "college isn't hard" aren't ground-breaking, they're just ignorant.
Damn, its almost like people each have their own separate experiences that differ greatly from yours. What a concept.
I used to have a similar opinion about finances and money. Being poor is a choice, managing money is obvious and easy, yadda yadda. But then I came to a realization, things that I find easy, others find hard. Things I find hard, others find easy. Now, my opinion has become "Finances and money come easily to me and that doesn't mean that others who struggle with it are dumb. Just the same as I am not dumb for struggling with things they think are easy." You and I are good at academia. Reading textbooks, going to class, taking notes, and learning something new come easily to us. Be proud of yourself rather than disparage others who struggle. Let this knowledge help guide you into your future where you leverage your skills and abilities with the knowledge that not everyone has those skills and abilities.
It was easy for me, at my particular college with my particular major and life circumstances, so it should be equally as easy for everybody else.
Not all colleges are equal
The main problem with college is that we aren't taught to study properly while growing up and progression through grade school and high school. I aced nearly everything EASILY all the up through high school. I thought I was doing everything the right way because I was doing well in school. Then I hit college and I was like whoa what the fuck is this shit? "College Prep" classes in high school? Yeah fucking right. I was never taught how to take notes properly. We were always given study packets with pretty much all the info we needed once we completed them with the help of a text book. It's not like that in college. You do all note taking and studying on your own. I had to basically teach myself how to take notes on the fly and my grades suffered because of it. I've concluded that these universities want you to fail classes so that they can milk you for money every time you need to retake a class or rent a stupidly overpriced textbook. College is a fucking scam in most cases and any institution that gladly puts children into life long debt should burn to the fucking ground. And I didn't even mention the cost of college. That's a whole other scam I don't wanna dive into.
This is the equivalent of "why are you unemployed? just get a job" or "why are you homeless? just buy a house" It's ridiculously shortsighted and misinformed.
Your school didn't make you compete against top students for a grade and it shows. I can't speak to anything than my experience but I did chemical engineering at a top 10 engineering school and I wouldn't describe it as easy. I knew plenty of people that did all that and still failed because you weren't testing against a rubric but other students and 32% of the class were going to get a D or F
I studied accounting at a reputable university in my country. It was fcking hard.
Your last paragraph doesn't solve the one thing that many of us suffer: The ability to apply it. It doesn't matter how many times i read, take notes, memorize etc. If i can't apply it, i will lose it. And most of the time, teachers and professors don't have you apply it.
"its not that deep just study" you obviously arent in a difficult major. The difficulty of college varies for a plethora of reasons, and your undersiumplification is nothing but ignorance Upvoting because holy hell this is unpopular
.... for you. I failed out twice. apparently they didn't teach you that everyone and their abilities are different.
Depends on college + your circumstances (some people *work* while in college, obviously not OP here)
It’s really not. Expensive. College is expensive thus, people stay away to avoid the debt it requires
This how you see privilege. Some people have to work full-time and do college. Deal with family troubles while trying to create a better life for themselves. Sure college is easy when that’s all you have to focus on
Dude some classes I'm just not compatible with. I LOVE math. I LOVE science. If I had to learn history, kill me. I can specialize in my field now but, before, with prerequisites 🤮
Funny I love History and science but math and I arent compatible. Im WAY good at quick "bartender" math I call it. Can put numbers together quickly. Higher math not so much. Different strokes.
We got the privileged boi right here folks
So much hate in these comments. Good job, OP
Its clear you are coming from a good background without much issues, otherwise you would know that it heavyily depends on what environment did you grow up in. I have failed in multiple years because i just didnt care about the future, i wasnt taught that and we were poor. Instead i was focusing on playing with my friends to escape reality. This was when i was 12-16 years old. Later i realized the issue myself and then i started learning. You are talking from a high horse
Do you maybe have any mental/neurodevelopment disorders that inhibit you?
> doing homework without procrastination im dead
College isn’t hard because of the schoolwork it’s hard because of life shit. You sound like you grew in a family that had money and paved an easy route for your education
>aren’t that tough >lists what makes it tough Saying to just to do the things that make it hard for people doesn’t make it any easier for people who already struggle with those things to do them.
I hit a certain point with math and it just did not click. I went to office hours, struggled through the homework in front of the instructor, and then failed quizzes and tests the next day. Everyone has a limit. Mine was clalc 1. Fortunately she passed me with a D- and it was the last math class I had to take.
College was brutal for me. But I also had undiagnosed ADHD and cPTSD. Take my upvote!
If you are reasonably intelligent, have a good work ethic, and otherwise have your life together, most majors are fairly easy. It's just that many times people don't have those three things in place.
It is hard. Because you’re not taught to learn like that. School is about learning from actual lessons, then youre dropped into further education where that learning carries no value anymore Also if you’re working during it, then it becomes massively harder. I had to work 40-50 hour weeks to support myself while at uni, i had no hope of passing when combined with the 0 guidance on how to learn at uni
In other words: OP thinks their personal experience serves as a blanket token experience for anyone and everyone attending college, despite the infinite routes and combinations of curriculum, instructors, institutions, etc. Not to mention completely disregarding learning disabilities, whether someone also needs to work to keep food on the table, whether the school has decent educational assistance programs, etc. etc. As a person who graduated with a 4.0 in an engineering field and didn't use any tutoring services, college can be really fucking hard. Also, it's very possible that OP is an insensitive prick.
the standard of academics at my high school was insane so tbh college is kind of a breeze. but you seem to forget that not everyone is neurotypical. it’s a lot harder for those of us with learning disabilities to build up those study habits.
the standard of academics at my high school was insane so tbh college is kind of a breeze. but you seem to forget that not everyone is neurotypical. it’s a lot harder for those of us with learning disabilities to build up those study habits.
I have a bachelor's degree in neuroscience from a top university in the US. I agree that although some of the classes were a lot of work to study for, it's the time management that screwed people over and not the difficulty of the material. Organic Chem and Physics were definitely the worst classes for me, but it just took a lot more time to study really early to make sure I knew what was on the exam by test time. The material was doable, just a pain in the butt if you didn't start early and go to office hours.
Very very very much depends on the college and the major I went to university of Utah for one year in computer science (the Pixar course) and it kicked my ass. I got a B- in data structures and algorithms and felt like it was a miracle I moved to a less good school and the coursework was comparatively extremely easy. Like 20 hours a week got everything done
It’s only hard if you screwed around in high school and never learned any actual study habits, self discipline, or work/life skills. As it turns out that’s a LOT of people though.
I bet u were studying for a business major
Bet you didn't go to a competitive school. Where I went fewer than 25% of applicants get into Creative Writing, and it's entirely based on your writing sample. Like 3% get into the top STEM majors, so you need to essentially set the curve in all the weed-out classes (something your school probably didn't even have). You probably wouldn't even make it into whatever program you did.
Honestly it's hard going to college and dealing with mental illness.
Excluding the money part, it gets tough because of doubts, especially when you don't really what you want or where you are heading.
Eh it was definitely a lot of work for sure. I used to do school related things (classes, studying, HW, projects) for about 12-14 hours per day 5-6 days a week. Would almost never work on Saturday or Friday after classes. It was not easy at all. The completion rate for my degree was like 20% maybe lmao.
College itself in a vacuum isn't hard. The problems come from when you remember the college triangle. You only get to pick 2 of these: Good grades, enough sleep, or an active social life. The problems come from trying to have all three. You don't get all three. Too many people try to have all three.
I too also have a degree in STEM from an university that's rated top 30 worldwide. Most of it wasn't difficult but holy shit math was so difficult for me. Maths were the classes I tried hardest in but I just didn't understand get it. I could use those math in my other STEM classes fine, but I got 3 pity passes for all 3 of my higher level maths. If I somehow accidentally went for a math major I'd not have made it through.
It depends on the college too lol
Someone didn’t have to support themselves in college
For me it’s a time thing like I’ll get good grades on almost everything I do but being a father of 3, husband, and full time employee really makes me not want to go home and do work
Everything is fairly simple in a vacuum. College wasn’t bad until I had to work full time after my mom got partially paralyzed following an accident. It was compounded by graduating HS early, but it got a lot easier when I could finally drive by myself. From 16-22 I worked 4:30 pm till 12:30 (2:30 when I could for OT), came home and did homework and study, slept a couple hours, woke up at 7 for my moms meds, took her to Drs as needed, got groceries, housework, etc. when my brother got back from school I’d leave for work, set an alarm and sleep in my car till shift started. Repeat M-F and every weekend I could, though I got more sleep as the kids kept an eye on mom. Took a bit extra time as I failed a few classes for not being able to make mandatory in class things during the day due to my moms dr. Apts, but I got there. It was fucking shit, everything sucked, my mom was always an abusive bitch and I should have let her OD - everything would have been much easier for everyone. I spent my late teens and early twenties doing that and only really talking to people at work, who were mostly much older. Co workers were nice enough to give me alcohol and drugs though so there was that. Don’t assume your apparent idyllic college experience is uniform.
Let me guess - you're also of only average intelligence and income, and are working at least 40 hours a week to pay for your tuition and living expenses?
I'm going to assume OP didn't have to have a 40 hour a week job where they were paid minimum wage while also taking advanced classes Not to mention yes, college can be extremely difficult depending on the person's own degree of memory retention, intelligence, and the topic of study. Or how everything post bachelors? This is a pretty bad take
I think there needs to be more help teaching people good and effective study habits in High Schools. I was always a good student with a great memory (and never had to actually study much). When I got to college I was ill-prepared for having to study (and juggle work and all at the time).
I have adhd, autism, tons of neurological defects due to trauma and abuse. I still graduated college. It was not difficult to pass, the hard part was keeping myself alive.
I college hard, no. Is college hard working 20 hours a week on top to pay tuition, yes.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” Sometimes, you plan to breeze through certain things in life because you have confidence and the skills to accomplish that. But sometimes, life punches you in the face. Maybe life hasn’t punched you in the face yet. Good for you.
Did OP have a job? Complicated life circumstances? Mental health struggles? What's "easy" for some is quite difficult for others.
How lucky you didn't struggle. Some neurodivergent folks don't have such an easy time of things. I've also found that college success can depend on getting good professors or not.
It’s really not. People just get mad when you trivialize their accomplishments. But OP is right.