Nobody reads the preface to a list, so here are the reasons:

1. People treat you like the adult you are
I was 18 when I graduated high school, and despite having 18 years of experience, I still needed somebody’s signature to approve my bowel movements. You don’t have to deal with these petty issues in college. Professors expect you to act like adults, and you want to meet those expectations; you strive to meet those expectations. Professors (usually) show their students a healthy amount of respect, and the students naturally return that respect.

2. Other college students want to learn
With few exceptions, your peers behave themselves in class and pay attention to the professors. With the exceptions being those having college paid for them, everyone wants to get an education that they can put to good use. Everyone is paying a good bit of money to be where they are, and everyone wants to get their money’s worth. This is how college courses can have upwards of 100 students and the atmosphere is still civil. In high school, this would be nearly impossible without hand-picking smart, motivated students.

3. You study topics you are passionate about
Not counting a few prerequisite’s, people are in college to study their passions. Do you want to be a computer engineer? Not only can you take classes that teach you how to build a circuit board, but you can join an IEEE club full of students building circuit boards for fun. Do you want to be an English major? Not only can you take literature classes, but you can join book clubs with like-minded individuals who also won’t make as much money as computer engineers. In high school, you had to take PE to round out your schedule. In college, you can take paragliding. High school limited you to a bunch of boring classes you had to take, but college offers many exciting classes you get to take.

4. You create your own schedule
Do you want to take math in the morning or at night? Do you want to have a three-day weekend every weekend? Would you rather have all your classes in a few days or spread them throughout the week? Depending on when certain classes are available, it’s up to you to decide. Gone are the days where you have to go to class from 8am to 3pm. Your weekly schedule is yours to mold.

5. Your time belongs to you between classes
Similar to point four, once you set up your schedule, your free time is all yours. Nobody forces you to go to lunch at a certain time. The gaps in your schedule can be spent studying, doing homework, going to a professor’s office hours, eating, chatting with friends, playing Guitar Hero… it’s your choice. Just another example of how college treats you like an adult. You have the opportunity to be responsible and use your time wisely, or piss it away beating Free Bird on Expert.

6. Your classes use current textbooks
This one is bittersweet. On one hand, you have to pay hundreds of dollars per semester for books, but on the other hand, the books you use have updated, current information. In high school, you’d use the same books for a decade. In college, you have textbooks that reference Barack Obama’s candidacy, YouTube, MySpace, and the latest research in chemistry and genetics. No longer are you stuck reading textbooks with statistics only leading up to 1995.

Bonus Interesting Thing
Teachers teach. Professors profess. Just something interesting to think about when a professor doesn’t explain something very well…