Transcription:

Dylan: Hello, welcome to episode 53 of the something newsy podcast. I am Dylan Hosing your host and today we are talking about adjusting from high school to college. I will let everyone introduce themselves. 

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Joey: Hi, I’m Joey Cruz. 

Leah: Hi, my name is Leah Lara. 

Jonny: And this is Jonny Richardson.

Leah: Okay, so what was everyone’s experience like transitioning from high school to college? Girl community college?

Jonny: Um, it was definitely different for me. 
It took me a while to realize that I’m not like, stuck in like the high school, public school schedule anymore. I can like if I can take classes whenever I want. I there’s no limitations at all. 


Leah: Yeah, that makes sense. Did you have any, like, struggles or something that you noticed that you didn’t like?

Jonny: My biggest struggle was definitely taking my first eight week class, I was that that was uh, not good. 

Yeah, cause all the curriculum is like compacted, not? Yeah. I didn’t realize how quickly, like or how much time we had to spend on an on an eight week class, cause it’s the same amount of like learning, just cram an eight weeks instead of 16 weeks.. 
And, uh, unless that was the first class I’ve ever failed. Yeah, that happened to me too. I think for me, well, I just graduated in June and I think like the biggest struggle for me was like adjusting socially because, like, you know, when you’re in high school, like, it’s just you’re talking to everybody and you’re kind of just everywhere and it’s like very easy to like get along with people and talk with people like in your classes, but in community college, it’s a little different because everybody is like at different points in their life. and a lot of people don’t really like to socialize in class where like make friends and stuff. 
So I think for me that was like a big a big adjustment. And everyone is on campus at different times and so. Yeah, one thing I notice is when you’re walking in your class or everyone has either their head down in their phones or they’re doing something on their own. 
Yeah. kind of very independent, you know. I graduated from high school 12 years ago. I graduated in 2012, like, I’m over a decade away from graduating high school now. 
And like, when I started in 2000 I started in 2013, that was my first I didn’t I skip one semester and it started the beginning of 2013 they didn’t even have ed plans back then. You just took classes, but now it’s all different now. You could have you have to have an ad plan. 
Like it I feel like it’s a lot easier for people coming in now because they have like a they have like a a structure of whether it’s for what they’re supposed to take, what they’re gonna take, they have like a more of a guide now, whereas back then you just like took classes like at random. out and people stayed and college forever, like like you could just keep taking classes, but now I feel like it’s it’s more structured and a lot more of these kids that are coming in now. They they’re more like they know what they want to do, they’re more like they they’re directly, okay, I want to do this, I want to go into engineering, I want to go in biology. I want to go into the arts, you know, and then so they have like a structure for you now of how you get there.. 
Did you guys already like know what you wanted to do coming into community college? Or like, are you in community college because you kind of like trying to figure out what you wanted to do. I I went into it as a criminal justice major, actually. 
Really? Because that was something that intrigued me, and then I took a few classes about that and I didn’t like the classes. I didn’t think it was for me. 
And journalism was something that I had always done in high school, so I switched my major to journalism. That’s cool. I took journalism all four years of high school as the sports that actually technically my freshman year, that’s right when COVID happened, so I was didn’t end up really doing anything editor wise, my freshman year, but I was a sports editor, my freshman year and then I was the associate editor, my sior year. 
I was so I was in high school, and I going into high school, I new journalism was what I wanted, and then go in community college, also. I’ve been a journal I’ve mainly have been taking journalism classes. I can advance my career for a. 
That’s cool, yeah. I had no freaking clue what I wanted to do. and I still don’t know, honestly. I’m just taking classes to see what happens and see if I like anything, but I’m liking journalism so far. not too bad. 
I went to a career performing art entire school, so, like, you had to like in my at least to my high school, you had to pick anything that’s like it’s becoming a lot more common now. You have to pick like uh like a major and stuff, like in high school. And so originally I wanted to be an actor, but I discovered it was a pretty terrible actor in like 10th grade. 
And so I switched from wine to be an actor to going into postroduction and so that’s what I’m doing now. I wouldn’t got my bachelor’s already in 2018 and then I’m just getting some supplemental degrees now. What are those degrees? 
I’m so I’m getting two associates one in web development and one in journalism to go along with the bachelor. I have a bachelor’s in film studies from Sacramento State. cool. I was in Sacramento for two years. 
And I feel like the classes, like that are offered at Mesa, like, definitely help you get those, because they have journalism here’re at Mesa, yeah, they all align you could get that here. Yeah. I feel like general ed just takes forever. 
Like, and there’s I’ve like I’ve talked to people from other countries stuff. they don’t have to take general ad. like in college, like they can just go straight into your major. That’s the thing I struggle with, especially in high school, I always wanted to journalists that I didn’t really need to go that far into like math or science. I never really cared that much. they make you take math science, English history. 
They make you take basically everything over again, at least your first two years of JC and then you get to go into your major. Yeah. I feel like it’s kind of annoying taking those classes, but I feel like it is crucial not gonna lie because, like during the summer, I feel like I literally forgot a lot of what I learned in high school, so, like having taking those classes again, like last semester kind of helped refresh my brain. 
I don’t know, I feel like it’s kind of just basic things that you should know. Obviously, like not every profession, like you need math. You know what I mean? 
But it’s like English and stuff. Like, I feel like everybody, you know, should be able to know how to write and stuff like. especially for journalists, like English is very important.. I think eventually they’re gonna only have like 11 grades of high school, because I have a little brother, he just he’s a freshman at Cal State Fort and he’s an engineering and he literally had all of his credits done by like the beginning of his senior year, because they’re allowing kids now if you mess up in any classes, you can just take those classes in summer now and just get credit for them. 
Whereas I don’t think like before you could we weren’t able to do that to a certain extent. So now all these kids are like, they’re wrapping up. Like they like seniors are barely like going to high school now. 
Yeah, they’re. No, so they were just they’re wrapping it up and like, by 11th grade, they’re done, and then they’re starting to take 18 in college classes now. I know it’s like a thing where a lot of like juniors in seniors, they take like community college courses and they like align it with their schedule, like at school. 
So it’s like they’re taking four classes like at their high school and then they’re taking two like at the community college. So you can get credit in high school and you can get credit when you, like leave high school, you know what I mean? So it’s like you’re already kind of ahead of a lot of people. the first semester I took classes here, that was that was last spring. 
There was this there was a high school student in that class, like, well, I didn’t realize he could do that. I think this school is combined is isn’t there, like cause I know that there’s high school kids here. There there’s like a they have a high school here, so there’s a high school here that’s like a college preparatory high school. 
So it’s meant to make, like those students that go to that high school. I think it’s San Diego met. They go to high school here and they also like get used to being on a college campus.. 
I never heard about that here. Do you guys like high school? Do you guys think your high school experiences much different than your college experience? 
Like, going from high school classes to college classes? I definitely think so. Last semester, I didn’t do that well because I put like I was only coming to campus twice a week and I was like excited about the fact that I only had to come twice a week and um like to my classes were online. 
So I went from doing like really well in high school to kind of like not so well in community college. But I feel like it’s all about just finding what works for you and adjusting No one forces you to go to class either. Like it’s all you have to have the determination to go on your own like. 
Yeah, the professors aren’t gonna call you and ask why youn’t I mean, they may. Some of them might. If you don’t show up for a long time, or they’ll dist drop you. 
But for the most part, they like you just you show up or you don’t. It’s like compared to high school where you have to show up every day, call us the big thing with college that you have to see, determine to go and like have a responsibility to go to class every day and, um paying for your own books. That’s another big thing. 
It’s like it’s getting better now. Like now it’s getting better because now they don’t make you buy as much, like I remember my first I paid like $300 for books. Whereas now they don’t make you do that as much, I think a lot of the professors now they’re trying to make it more accessible so they’ll put like portions of the textbook on canvas or they’ll like just make the the resources more available. 
So I would students don’t have to pay two, three, four hundred dollars for books. I think COVID really helped that, too, with just online books that you don’t have to pay for anymore. makes sense. And then going back to the like transitionions from high school to college, I and um like not having anyone, like telling you, oh, you have to be here. 
Um, I mean, that’s I realized very quickly. I needed to have good time management for here, cause like, yeah, going to cause going to going to class is just two days a week. Like, I have a there’s a lot more free times, a lot more of things I could be doing. 
Other things I could be doing when I was in high school, like I had to be on the campus, and so I would just get my school work done. by school and then not to worry about it at home. Now, there’s not much time I spending on campus, it’s more at home and trying to do school work at home homes. Yeah, and not procrastinating because I’m a big procrastinator, honestly. 
I do everything at the lesson in. I think you’re right. I think the pandemic did change a lot, like, people don’t have to like, like when I when I started JC, you had to go to class, like you had usually two months two Monday, Wednesdays and two, Tuesday, Thursday. 
So you had four classes and you had to be on campus four days a week. Now people are barely on campus one day a week or two days a week. I’ve been hybrid, so I’ve been like half line half in person, so I only go in person like two days a week, but then I’ll go I’ll do a lot of online work, like on my off days. 
Yeah, and for the most part, like the journalism classes that kind of need to do in person. but taking those then taking most like my journal id online. Yeah. So. 
It’s definitely definitely allows for a lot more flexibility of schedules. It’s a lot more streamlined.. And it cuts down on the traffic to is another big thing. for me, cause like when I started going to Mesa, like the traffic, like we didn’t they didn’t have as much parking as we do now and the traffic was like 3X when it is now because there was people didn’t you had online classes, but there was like maybe one or two, like majors that offered in. 
But now, like it’s offered everywhere. And like the traffic was threeX worse. like people with people wouldn’t miss class because of the parkinguations. be But I feel like that also now fits in with your time management and how you you have to operate, people would come here an hour before class to get a parking spot.. I show up 30 minutes earlier just to try to find parking and then walk to my glasses. 
Yeah, yeah, that’s annoying. I take public transportation so I don’t have to worry about that, but that’s like a whole other it’s a whole other thing. Well, then you have to address your schedule for the transit schedule. 
Yes, bro I like an hour and 30 minutes early, early or I took pub in my first year. It’s so annoying. Yeah, I walking up that hills, you know, joke.. 
Right. well, I don’t take the 41. I take the where I get dropped off like in the front, so I don’t have to watch so much. I used to take the 41 I have to walk up the hill and that and the rain against raining into that I walk in the rain. 
Is that huge staircases is now? Yeah. I went up and down that because there was some there was some buildings over there that I was looking at and then um I still remember when they didn’t have an elevator and they so they only you had in order to get up to the sub, you had to take the big staircase to get up to the top of the mes like, they didn’t have the elev they didn’t have the eye they were barely finishing the eye for 100 when I started here. 
I do like exercise. I try to do this staircase as much as possible, not elevators, but uh that’s the staircase there is it makes me reconsider that. If I ever have to walk up those stairs, I’ take that as my, like exercise for the day. 
I’m like, okay, living, I’ll take the elator and let me go to the stairs and that’s it over the day. Look at my watch, I got ten points of stairs on that one. What else? 
Um What about money? What about budgeting your guys’s money? How do you guys do with that? 
I’m very bad at it personally. That’s one thing they should teach in high school is like personal fine. I know they have Ion, but I feel like Eon is like it teaches you like it’s more about like government economics. 
I mean, I end up I took AP government instead of economics, I didn’t get that. Well, you didn’t have to say econ at all.. I feel like that should be a class that people need to take, because that’s like yeah, a big thing nowadays when on a properly safe and spend. 
Well, at least in my school, I went to Powi, they allowed you to take uh d take APub instead of economics, like and replace of that. Is that they did that in my school, too. So is that more of a like more economy, like you learn about financial stuff? 
They taught me how to write a check and that’s how long ago I took it Economics, I kind of learned more about like like, APRs and stuff, like teach you about credit cards, they teach you about, uh, like bank what was it banks? I did I’ learn about that at all. I learned about like like stocks and stuff. 
It was bigger stuff than just like you’re all in, yeah. We did do a little bit stocks and need to go. I also took the economists and then I took another class law in action that was definitely more of what was what the public supposed need to offer. 
It’s more of those type of classes. So it’s called law in office. in action. So is that like tell you, like how to feel like a job applications and like and like credit cards and information, all that. cool it’s like it’s like a combination both kind I think that I think that was a newer class treatated the operative highway, so hopefully hopefully they start offering those classes more. 
But in other public schools. You have personal finances important, especially when you’re in college, and especially if if you’re living on your own and if you’re sharing a room with someone or you don’t live like with your family, like managing your rent and your bills and all that, plus school can be a lot. Anyways, I think I think we’re all like Thank you for listening to something newsy podcast. 
Bye.