High School Prep Does Matter

On May 26, 2010, the night that I graduated from high school, I felt a myriad of emotions, and the positive ones — excitement, overwhelming joy and pride — were the strongest. At the same time, lingering at the back of my mind, I was also apprehensive, nervous, and even a little bit reluctant to leave the school that I loved so much in order to walk out into the unknown.

On a rational level, I knew that Empire had fully prepared me to take that next step into college. I had amazing teachers who taught me so much throughout my four years there.

Still, that didn’t stop me from feeling anxiety about the transition to college. It was a drastically different environment both socially and academically, unlike anything I had ever experienced before. The fact that I was graduating from Empire High School, the country’s first all-laptop and heavily technologically-based high school, actually caused me a little bit more confusion as to what to expect. For the past four years, the assignments I had done in school had been so unique and technologically driven. Of course college would be structured differently, but it was the question of how differently that puzzled me.

In the several weeks leading up to my first day at the University of Arizona, my worry manifested itself in strange ways. I consistently dreamed of going to my classes for the first time, feeling confident and well-prepared, only to find the professors and the other students discussing things that I had no idea about and that were way above my level – leaving me totally clueless as to what was going on. Needless to say, by the night before my first day of classes, I lay awake for nearly the entire night, petrified with fear, and tearfully imagining my future as the class dunce.  

As the first four weeks of college unfolded, I began to see how drastically wrong I had been, and I was actually astonished by how inaccurate my initial fears were. The realization first came to me when I was sitting in my biology class, and the professor was telling us about the comprehensive 10 minute PowerPoint presentation that we had to complete by next week and present to the class regarding a genetic disease of our choice.

My immediate mental reaction, in almost these exact words, was: “Oh, that’s it? That’s our big unit project that’s worth a significant chunk of our grade? I’ve done this at Empire since freshman year.”

That was when nearly every single one of my classmates started bombarding the professor with questions, and many of them really freaked out because it was going to be the first PowerPoint presentation they had ever put together and presented in front of a class.

I was stunned.

My time at Empire made things like putting together thorough PowerPoint, Keynote, or iMovie presentations, and effectively presenting them to an audience, second nature. While most other people were learning these skills for the first time, I had already been exposed to them for four years.

The benefits of this experience showed when it was time to make the presentations. In all honesty, for me, it was nearly effortless – it was just an extension of the skill set that I had been taught at Empire. However, many others who hadn’t had the same exposure struggled with their presentations. After my presentation, I remember thinking back to high school when I sometimes disliked how monotonous these PowerPoint projects could be, but now, I realize their benefits.  I am so thankful that my laptop experience in high school prepared me so well for facing these challenges in college.

I experienced something similar earlier this week when in another one of my classes, we were assigned a 12-page research paper on a topic of our choice, done in full MLA format, with all resources from scientific journals in online databases. Again, I wasn’t thrown off too much by the nature of the assignment at all. I had done my share of these during high school as well. The requirements, and the knowledge of what I needed to do — from solid structure of the paper to where to find sources, how to cite them, and how to use MLA — were all things that I knew already, but many of my classmates had a hard time grasping them. It is a lengthy paper to write, but I have the confidence of knowing that it is something I have done successfully in the past, and that I can emulate that success now.

About five weeks after college has started, I feel much more reassured and calm than I did going in. It’s true that the work is challenging, the readings sometimes feel as insurmountable as Mount Everest, and the teaching style is drastically different. Still, I’ve settled into life at the University of Arizona, and I enjoy it. At the same time, though, as I get ready to attend Homecoming at Empire later this week, I have to admit that my appreciation for my high school now even outstrips what it was at graduation. I have always known that Empire is an amazing school with a great environment and exceptional teachers. Now, though, I realize that the skill set that I acquired there has more than prepared me for the work that I am now facing, and will continue to face in college and throughout life, and I am grateful for that.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have gone to high school anywhere else. 

About the author: Anushka Mohideen is a freshman at the University of Arizona. She will be writing future articles about the transition from high school to college, being tech savvy on a college budget, and class preparations that will assist high school students as they get ready to enter college, as well as other relevant issues.