Did people find the high school to college transition believable?

[PurplePoof]

...based on your own experiences?

I certainly did...The Freshman in particular seemed like someone had been spying on me my first day of uni and wrote up a script about it. The confusion, the overwhelmingness, the sense of being completely out of your element...it hit home.

And the gradual growing apart of the Scoobies over the course of the season really struck a chord with me too. I know some people don't like that about season 4, but it's what happens. You meet new people, experience new things...and sometimes you start to become distant from your really close buds in high school, as much as you never think you ever will...

Anybody else?

 

[Edmund Blackadder]

Did people find the high school to college transition believable?

Yes

 

[Kean]

Everything that happened to Buffy in The Freshman (apart from the slaying of course) has happened to me in college.

Crazy, insane roommate...Check!
Kicked out of a class and humiliated by the lecturer...Check!
Losing contact with my school friends...Check! (it's still something that I lament about)
Feeling overwhelmed and lost...Check!

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

...based on your own experiences?

I certainly did...The Freshman in particular seemed like someone had been spying on me my first day of uni and wrote up a script about it. The confusion, the overwhelmingness, the sense of being completely out of your element...it hit home.

And the gradual growing apart of the Scoobies over the course of the season really struck a chord with me too. I know some people don't like that about season 4, but it's what happens. You meet new people, experience new things...and sometimes you start to become distant from your really close buds in high school, as much as you never think you ever will...

Anybody else?

I mean, it's not like it was that difficult a transition for them. They were till in Sunnydale, after all.

 

[Relic]

Thats just it though, LifeIsJustThis, I think they changed alot even though campus was right across town.

To me transition is not measured in distance from home so much as distance grown/new experiences/responsibilities and how you deal with things of that nature....like you said transition...does it really matter how hard or easy change is expected to be when your dealing with so many of them? Room mates from hell 😉 , a feeling of insignificance and learning the ropes (unless your Oz and oddly he changed dramatically too), going from a senior/ protector award winner to a face in the crowd you no longer recognize fully, dealing with unknowns- from classes, to professors, to dorm assignments to new love interests.

No Giles and library, no Xander, No Angel, less familiarity. Plenty of smart predators who get inside your head like Parker and Sunday. Many opportunities to make what you will with the new surrounds. Finding common ground with old enemies, or at least not killing them when they are 'defenseless'. Lots of other stuff.

Maybe it's not college though so much as just growing up; things a slayer is expected to do right off - but seldom if ever get the real opportunity to do.

 

[Kean]

I mean, it's not like it was that difficult a transition for them. They were till in Sunnydale, after all.

Not necessarily true. The University I go to is 20 minutes from the house I grew up in and it was still a huge change. Granted I didn't get the weird roomie until I moved to America but still college is college regardless how far away it is, the change from school is massive.

 

[atticus]

Yeah i think the transition is very believable, not sure if the environment is though. My room never looked that nice. And if i looked to have my best friend be my room mate, my land lady would have gone psycho. 🙂

 

[Lindsey McDonald]

I thought Buffy's transition was handled really well, but I thought Willow's was brilliant too! Take her away from the Cordelites, give her a bit of self-confidence and BAM!

 

[Tranquillity]

yeah, that estrangement from high-school friends with an underlying hint of compeditiveness was just spot on.

 

[Bluebird]

I thought it was believable, yeah. But I loved Xander's perspective on the whole thing. He's so lost after school, no college, drifting between jobs. Reminds me of me, but without the living in the parent's basement thing. :hehe:

 

[Joyce Summers]

Yeah looking back on The Freshman and the entire season four it definitely mirrored my first year at college. And like a lot of you have said- it doesn't matter how close to home you are. It's still a big change. I mean I went to the Univeristy in my town, but I still moved out and that was a huuuge transition for me. Luckily it meant I could pop home during my spare time once a week to steal everything out of my Mom's fridge and give her all my dirty laundry 😀 (See that was the ONE thing missing from Buffy's student life. The big cheats and benefits of being close to home haha). But I remember being so lost during my first week. I was just in a mass of a crowd all giving me shiny leaflets for societies, and parties and protests (I got a BE RED communist one at one point which erm was a little strange) and because you're too overwhelmed to do your usual no-thank-you routine you end up arriving to your first class with a gazillion leaflets piled on top of you.

But like Buffy at the end of the episode I think after your first week you begin to get your rhythm. Luckily I didn't get the crazed room mate though- I was really lucky in that respect- but like the Buffster I did go to Uni with quite a few high school friends which was nice, a few of which I'm still close with now, but throughout that first year you're so busy adjusting and going to your own classes that you start to have less and less time for one another but for some reason at least two of them I'm still excellent friends with now weirdly enough, haha. Ooh! And I did have one friend of ours who didn't go to college, okay so she was a girl and not a boy but she definitely in retrospect had that Xander fear of being ignored and I remember at some point she got rather bitca-y about us apparently focusing too much on college and forgetting her....so yes, season 4 got it right on the money I think haha.

Of course I spent part of my second year in England so that was the BIIIIG change for me really. I. Was. Terrified. And alone. 🙁 haha.

 

[Perny]

I dunno... I bough it.

 

[LizzieRainbow]

Yes i found it believable, when i forst went to uni i had to deal with the horror demon roommate (although not a literal demon like in buffy). I also had the problem of dealing with my friends going off to classes and making new friends etc.
I feel that Joss has covered the transition from high school to college very well indeed, he has shown how not just Buffy but Willow too dealt with teh preasures of college along with her personal life.

 

[Tueuse de Vampires]

Oh I could so relate. I felt so lost the first day I moved in my new student house, the first day I went to university...I can make so many checks in the first few episodes. Except I never got kicked out of a lecture. They don't do that here. mainly because they just ignore you altogether.

 

[BuffyElevated]

I think they did an excellent job with making it realistic (save for the vamps, of course!)... My first roomie was a LOT like Kathy, except she played "If I Had a Million Dollars" by Barenaked Ladies non-stop. LOL

 

[PurplePoof]

I mean, it's not like it was that difficult a transition for them. They were till in Sunnydale, after all.

Like others have said, I don't think this is too important of a factor. My university is about a 10-minute drive from my house, and I didn't even move out, and it was STILL huge for me.

So thankfully I've never had to experience the roommate madness (I refuse to live in a dormatory...I could never share a bathroom with an entire floor of random people...never). I sometimes feel I'm missing a lot of the university experience by not living in residence, but I think I'll survive.

As for getting kicked out of a lecture...is that just an American thing or what? I've seen professors in my university grow agitated with students who were talking during a lecture to the point of being disruptive and somewhat snap at them, but I've never seen full-out humiliation like what Buffy experienced. And seriously, if a professor ever tried to kick me out of a class...I'd respond with "you know how much I friggin' paid to be here? You can kiss my sweet robust ass!"