Many high school teachers strive for students to remember them. Many teachers give the “you will thank me later in college” rules and act like if you don’t use their rules, you will fail college. The fact is that most of your high school teachers have no clue about how the college education system works today. Some of them probably still think that you go to the archive section of the library to find that one quote you need for a paper. The summer before I stepped onto Grounds, I wondered how many of these rules are actually important. Today, I am answering that question.
Here are four things that high school teachers told you would be important for college but actually aren’t —
- Do all of your homework on time
If your professor assigned 60 pages of reading for one night during the summer session, they know you will not read every single detail in its entirety. Professors understand that they assigned a humanly impossible task to be completed in one night. In fact, some of your professors would confess that they similarly have chronic procrastination on posting homework solutions, lecture notes and videos on Collab. One of my professors publicly confessed that he was still hungover from his birthday party the night prior. You have to just suck it up and coexist with procrastination. If you “cure” your procrastination, as your high school teacher suggested, you will work your butt off just for your professor to tell you the next day that they know most students didn’t read it.
- Proper attire
All my high school teachers mentioned that proper attire was necessary to make a good first impression to your professors. However, there is no way for your chemistry professor to notice that you wore pajama pants to a 400-person lecture unless you sit in the front row. If your high school teacher was concerned that students would show up with “bizarre” clothing choices, I can guarantee you that some professors also have really interesting tastes in fashion — pink bow ties are especially trendy this semester. Unless you are applying to the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy or the McIntire School of Commerce, at which they pressure you to show up in suits in 80-degree weather, don’t let the proper attire talk from you high school teachers wear you down.
- Proper language
This depends on professors. Your high school teachers told you to use proper language in emails, essays and any other communication you write to your professors. However, in the ever-evolving 21st century, some of your professors would feel “old” if you write an email according to the format handout your high school English teacher gave you. “Dear Professor XXX, good evening. It is my uttermost regret to inform you that I will not be able to attend tomorrow’s lecture.” Don’t make yourself sound like a Founding Father or some dead British author. Most of your professors want to catch up with Gen Z and would ask you what certain slang words mean. You should actively expect your professor to write you back in emails with intriguing usages of slang words, such as “sounds good. And I understand that you want to chill in your bed. Don’t we all? See you on Zoom.”
- MLA format
If you decide to ignore this article as a whole, I beg you to take one piece of advice away — do not use MLA format for all assignments. You do not need to bring the nostalgia of high school with you to Grounds. Missing your page limit by half of a page is not an excuse to double space your name, class, professor, date and title. High school teachers treat MLA as the holy grail with which you can use on your resume to stand out among thousands of applicants and get your dream internship. Unless you are an English major or your professor specified, often professors do not care for Times New Roman, 12 point font and one-inch margins. Printing out 10 pages of double-spaced short response questions only adds to the weight that your professor has to carry around. Typed assignments are simply professors’ ways to avoid deciphering unrecognizable handwriting from STEM students. You never wanted to memorize the citation format anyways, so why bother. We should just be grateful that we have autocorrect and spell check to not expose our inability to spell and use words other than text abbreviations.
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