WSU Freshman: How Are They Adjusting to College

PULLMAN, WASH.- “I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn’t know it was going to be this hard,” said freshman Anna Sabins.

Freshman at Washington State University are almost half way through their first semester of college. With the last year of high school being almost completely virtual, some are struggling with the adjustment of closing laptops, grabbing backpacks and heading to class. 

“Going from being at home every single day to having to actually go to your classes and having to get that academic drive back has been a lot harder than I expected it to be,” Sabins said.

The workload her senior year of high school did not prepare her for college. 

“I did not have a lot of work at all, and a lot of it was you know you can use your resources and online tests, it really took away all academic integrity,” Sabins said. 

WSU professors have also noticed this gap in education.

“Freshman are generally overwhelmed but this is a big adjustment… some of it has been the rigor of the coursework,” AJ Miller, Assistant Professor of Music said. 

“Zoom high school was pretty much a joke, so I think they were not expecting homework, or if they were expecting homework they weren’t expecting it to actually be hard, and maybe not even hard but expecting to actually do some stuff. I think the stress level especially right now as were coming up on midterms you can feel the tension a little bit,” Miller said.

A stressful time that he hopes students will be able to get through.