by Breanna Adamick

When I graduated high school, I imagined college as this huge step forward; everything—classes, workload, daily life—would be more difficult. When I fairly quickly adjusted to college in the first few weeks, however, I began to feel like it was more of a sidestep to where I had been in high school. I was learning plenty of new things already, being challenged by having to adjust to the new environment, professors and type of work, but expectations were surprisingly low, I thought.  

COVID-19 made everyone a bit more lenient with deadlines and assignments, which my freshman self truly did not mind. Eventually, however, we got further and further away from the peak of the pandemic—quarantines and regular online learning—and got back to a more regular state of college life. I figured expectations would go back up again—assignments might get harder, deadlines stricter, workloads heavier, perhaps as they might have been before the pandemic.  

In taking some higher level, higher difficulty classes late my sophomore year and the whole of my junior year, however, I began to question this. It still feels, to me, like professors are taking it too easy on us. Each professor will have their own teaching style and idea for the class, of course, and course content will vary in difficulty, but I have encountered a few classes now that I thought should be a bit more challenging than they ended up being.  

I am not saying that classes should ramp up to the level where we have to really fight to get a passing grade, but I do think that when a class is above a certain specified numerical level (for example, 3000 or 4000-level) and provides knowledge that could be instrumental in one’s future career, there should be a higher demand for students’ effort and participation in all aspects.  

When we each leave this school and move on to a different school for a graduate program, or else go straight into the work field, we need to have been prepared for the inevitably harder tests and programs we will go through. I have heard that graduate schools and programs can often seem like they are leaps and bounds harder and above the level of undergraduate work, and that is another reason why I believe it is necessary that undergraduate courses be a more discernible step up from high school. 

Invariably, the aspects of making your own schedule, potentially living more independently and keeping yourself accountable for your day-to-day responsibilities are a big difference between high school and college. It is something that everyone points out, as those new responsibilities are much more adult-like in nature since college is in part about the transition to adulthood. That, already, can be challenging to begin with and I believe that classes should provide that same sort of challenge—learning to balance daily living responsibilities with adequately demanding job or educational responsibilities.  

This past summer, I underwent intensive training for a new job in the medical field. There were multiple steps of training, with the first step being online “classroom” training in which we were learning more about the job expectations and how best to perform it. Even in that first step of training, you were held to a high standard—the expectation being that within a matter of days, after attending all five long classes before one week was up, you would irrefutably know your stuff and be able to pass the difficult, timed exam so that you could move on to the next steps of training. There were no hints, no study sessions, no extensions or guaranteed retakes.  

Those moments make it highly important that you are confident and prepared in your education. It was an incredibly different experience than anything I have come across at GC, which is why it stood out to me so much. And why I believe it is so crucial for our later success that the school and professors understand that during our studies, they should not be treating us like we are made of glass. We need the challenge, the realism, so that we can be prepared for our later endeavors and employment.  

One thing that is a big part of Greensboro College’s allure is the much more personal connection you can have with your professors, instead of how it would be if you were going to a larger school. The longer you are at GC, the more you will get to know—and likely appreciate—your professors, and in turn you will become quite familiar to them as well. With that being said, those professors who know you well will start to expect more from you and push you a bit harder towards greater success. At least, that is the hope. It is our job as students to respect that is what they are here for, and to be receptive to increased expectations and more work needing to be done. 

My hope is that the further away we get from the disaster years taken up by COVID-19, the more our expectations for our education and work will rise once again. While it is easy for a lot of us students to say we do not necessarily mind some of the more relaxed classes we have had, I think we will all come to appreciate the classes we have that challenge us more, as those will often be the ones that teach us the most and stick with us later in life. In short, learning as much as we can now before we enter the ‘real world’ is vastly important and something each of us should be working hard to accomplish.