The Oberlin Review
<< Front page Arts April 22, 2005

How we see it... Oberlin through the eyes of High School students

The worst part about getting into college was definitely the amount of lying I had to do. During my interview at Albion College in Michigan, I told the man who interviewed me that I was in the process of raising money for a local politician. In fact, I looked him right in the eye and said, “I’m selling cookies for money. My friends and I have raised around $200 for Marcy Kaptur’s campaign.”

I know he knew I was lying to him. We were both thinking that there is not a single high school student on the face of the earth who has enough interest in any campaign to bake cookies. So why did I lie to him?

Because I’ve been in the Oberlin city schools for 13 years. For those 13 years, I’ve been waiting to get out. Each weekday, I have to run through cramped halls when a bell tells me to. Each weekday, my friends and I stand in line for an overpriced slice of pizza, when we could just as easily buy a better slice at Downtown Pizza for the same price. Some days I have to convince myself that I really need to understand how Moore’s Law affects my daily life. I do this in hope that someday I can get out and never have to do it again.

My life will be so much better when I go to college. It has to be, because all the college students I know are more interesting, more mature and more interested in what they learn than high school students are. Life is just better in college.

I was talking to my friend who is a freshman in college. He told me that he felt the same way about college until he got there. For every hardworking and mature student, he said, there is another student who is just as lazy, obnoxious and whiny. They’re just like high school students, except they’re paying thousands of dollars to be together.

I lied to the man at Albion College because I had convinced myself that the only way I could escape the mediocre life of high school was through college. In fact, I was so ready to get out of high school that it never occurred to me that some things never change. It never occurred to me that I would encounter irritating people and boredom wherever I go. Of course, I’m going to have to deal with homework I don’t want to do, as well as obnoxious people.

I don’t know if my life will be better or not, but everything that happens to me at college is going to be different, whether I like it or not.

This essay was written with the assistance of the Community-Based Writing Program. Contact Anne.Trubek@oberlin.edu for more information.
 
 

   


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