The difference
The difference between my undergraduate experience and my limited graduate school experience is significant.
- To begin with, I know almost all of my classmates. In undergrad, I usually only knew the person sitting next to me in class.
- I don’t hate studying. I’ve done nearly six hours of homework today and I’m cool with that. Granted, I knew that I would have little to no free time once classes began and I’m finding that yes, I still have time to sleep AND get most of my work done.
- The content is interesting. Even accounting, which I feared (and still do) is interesting.
- My teachers are normal people, or at least they’ve fooled me so far. Unlike undergraduate courses, we’re not treated like idiots. Looking back, a lot of us were total idiots at 19 and 20, so I can’t really blame the professors.
- I can manage my time wisely. Granted, doing homework on Saturday isn’t fun fun, but getting it done now rather than waking up in a cold sweat thinking about a pending assignment is pretty valuable.
- We’re in it together. Our teachers encourage group work. They want us to turn in individual assignments and complete group projects. There’s no point in copying off of someone else because homework doesn’t count nearly as much as the exams do. Therefore, it is best to spend time trying to understand the material rather than get all A’s on homework that is only worth 10% of your grade.
I realize that this may be obvious to most people, but it makes a lot more sense to me now that I’m older (and wiser, ha!). Instead of just plowing through school with hopes of getting a decent job when I graduate, I want to instead take interesting classes, work really hard, get to know some cool people, and ultimately LEARN a lot. Quitting a good job and going back to school was a tough decision. I’m not going to fuck it up.