Studying at High School and University

I am a first-year student of An Giang University. I am very happy that I can continue my studies so that I will become a teacher as I have wished for years. Some years ago, I used to think that everything at high school and at university was similar, so I was surprised when I first came to An Giang University because it was very different; however, there were also some similarities. Now I would like to tell you about the similarities and the differences between life as a high school student and life as a university student.

I was proud that I was a student of Thoai Ngoc Hau High School. It was the most famous school of An Giang Province, so it was rather large. There were thirty six classes with over four hundred students and about sixty teachers. It had two computer labs but they were single-user computers, so we used them only to study informatics. There was also a library, it was rather small compared with a well-equipped public library. When we studied gymnastics or organized sport matches, we entered the gymnasium; however, it didn’t have enough apparatuses. The school-yard was wide enough for us to play sports after 5 p.m everyday. When we felt sick or had a pain in our body, we could have come to the school clinic. Every month, we had some activities for each subject such as presenting small plays, participating in drawing contests and telling stories. Those helped us review our lessons and cultivate our minds. Nevertheless, we were often very stressful because we had to study fifteen subjects each year, so we had to take so many tests that we didn’t have much time to play sports with our friends and to do anything we liked. It was so boring that we sometimes fell asleep in our class, our teachers explained all the lessons for us and we had to write very fast and learned by heart all them. Although there were many things we weren’t clear on, we asked our teachers only after our class finished because each period had forty five minutes, it wasn’t enough
for us to discuss while studying. Our teachers were nice, but most of our friends were unfriendly and they were often dishonest while doing tests because they weren’t well-prepared before.Now I am studying at An Giang University. It is rather well-equipped. Its campus is very wide. There are over ninety classes with many students and instructors. The library is large and it has many kinds of books, cassettes and networked computers, so we can get information for our studies easily because we usually study by ourselves. We usually have presentations. It is useful that we can remember all the lessons clearly because we have to read a lot of books and prepare carefully in order that our presentations will be good enough and attract our classmates. Besides, we will feel more and more self-confident whenever we appear in front of many people, we also have a unified spirit when we study in group. Most of the members in my class are very nice, friendly and active. We always help our classmates when they have problems or give them advice when they make mistakes so that we will become better and better. There is an English Speaking Club which was organized twice a month so as to improve our speaking skill and communication skill, we have many friends when taking part in this club, they are friendly and sociable. In addition, there are some foreigner teachers at my university, we can ask them about many things which we aren’t clear, they are willing to help us, it is also a good condition for us to practice speaking English and to improve our knowledge.When being at high school, we had a flag greeting-ceremony every Monday. School managing board summed up all the activities of the previous week, gave their ideas and promoted new plans for that week. It was very good, but now we don’t have that period. Besides, we study less subjects than we did at high school, so we can relax by playing sports and participating in many activities after hard-studying days. There are much more students and teachers than my high school, the library is larger and the campus is wider. In addition, I didn’t have good conditions to practice speaking English at high school because many students disliked it and felt shy when speaking, there were no also foreigner teachers and English Speaking Club. Seldom did we study in group because we didn’t have presentations at high school. Now studying in group is very necessary because if we don’t, we can’t have a good group presentation. The biggest difference between university and high school is the method of teaching and studying, so we felt strange at the beginning of this school-year. However, we have got acquainted with all the differences up until now.In my opinion, studying at university is more interesting than studying at high school. It has a lot of good conditions for us to study, to relax and to develop our skills. It is very bad for our health if we only study without relaxing and we will feel very sad if we have just a few friends. There are a lot of good chances, so we should make use of them to study better and better in order that our country will become an industrialized nation.Phan Duc Duy - 9D2