This class is a constant reminder that I am no longer in high school anymore.

Sure living in a dorm, not having to ask your parents to go places, and paying for things on your own are all indications of college life, but so far, all my classes now vaguely remind me of the classes I took my senior year of high school.

Except this one.

I feel like high school prepares students for getting into college, but fails to prepare students for the actual college experience. Our biology teaching lab is a prime example of this. I got good grades in high school, but I never really learned the true value of the scientific method or the relevance of modern research.  Where high school labs taught you to follow directions, this lab tells you to make your own procedure. Where high school labs asked you to repeat, this lab prompts you to discover. In high school, I would change my results to fit what was expected to happen, for fear of getting points counted off my lab report. In this lab, every result (expected or unexpected, success or failure) holds crucial information that can be used to create new questions or hypotheses. My motivation for performing well in a high school lab was to get a good grade; my motivation for doing well in this lab is to learn as much as I can so that I can then apply what I’ve learned to other courses, to other research, and even to everyday life.

I have learned more in two weeks of not being “successful” than I learned in a year of “successful” lab experiments in high school, and I think that is what college is all about.