The shift from high school to college for incoming freshmen is one of choice and responsibility. You do not have to go to college, but you do.

You do not have to make the most out of your time, but you try. You do not have to do anything you do not want to, but sometimes you do anyways.

Before entering college, we are all subjected to the same standardized testing in the spring of our final year of high school, which is the determining factor for whether or not we are placed into Math 095, 105 or 106, and English 095, 101 or 102.

It does not matter if we know what we want to do with the rest of our lives or not. We all took these standardized tests to place us where we “belong,” and they are excruciatingly tedious.

The few who did well enough on the exams tested out of these preparatory classes, and those who did not found themselves right in the middle of the rudimentary basics again, an era they thought they escaped from when they graduated from high school.

Maybe it is not so bad though. Maybe students need to feed from the bottle one more time before we are through with our academic weaning. Maybe someday down the line, they will be interviewing for a job at the Psychic Friends Network, and wham!, right out of center field, Dionne Warwick asks what we think about Walker Percy and Thomas Kuhn.

We know she’s screwing with us anyway, and before we can utter an “I don’t know?” we are already walking out the door, still unemployed.

Damn.

No, not every situation in the future will entail an interview with a world-renowned psychic superstar using us for fun. Likewise, not every interview will delve into the back catalogue of one’s academic coming of age where most of us were too drunk or high to remember if it was actually something about Kuhn and Percy or the instruction label on the back of a macaroni package.

Knowledge is trippy, but it also has its utility, and we are all kind of hungry … for knowledge.

Around this time of the year, freshmen should have developed a sense of what is expected of them in the college environment. They might take stock of what they have learned so far, how higher education has failed them, or how it has helped.

Either way, they will be unabashedly honest when asked about how their classes are going so far.

“It’s a lot of busy work,” said Matt Ryan, 18, of his English 101 class. “It seems like the reading and what we write on is pointless.

“I do think it’s making me a better reader and writer, but it’s not geared toward English. I thought it was going to be writing a lot of essays and homework, but now I know I’m getting an assignment and that it’s due next the class period,” he said.

Brian Johnson, 19, said, “I don’t feel that it’s a waste, but the way they teach English 101 is not a good use of our time.”

Though English classes seem to bear the brunt of the grievances against school-mandated requirement classes for freshmen, math is not far behind. Most freshmen end up testing into Math 095 or 105, and if they have can, they will take Math 106 and just get it over with.

However, that still does not make it any less annoying or cumbersome to take.

“It’s not even regular math, it seems like fake math,” said Math 106 student Mary Kelly, 18. “It’s extremely easy.”

Math 095 student Therese Durges, 18, said, “I wish we could just get all the assignments and do them ourselves, and I’m not even getting credit for this class anyway.”

Through all the hype, anxiety, excitement or ambivalence that accompanies freshmen to their first day of school, most will soon find out their first semester is not exactly college, yet.

“I want to get good grades because I want to get good grades, not because I care about math,” Kelly said.

Some freshmen feel like they are above the lessons taught in these math courses.

“It’s way easier than high school math, and reminding me of what I already learned,” Durges said.

In the end, we will all be at least somewhat grateful for the experience. Whether it was backtracking through high school math or writing about uninspiring topics in English, it is all meant to buy students a little more time before getting thrown to the wolves lurking between the aisles in the library, or a little more time to figure out exactly what in the hell they want to do.

And that is precisely the opening act of college.

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