0:15  
My name is Natalie, I'm 20 years old and I'm recently a university dropout.

0:21  
Natalie Susa, like many other students that rush into university is a drop out. Not because she didn't care, but because she was unprepared for the harsh realities of what university is really like.

0:34  
If we flashback to high school, basically, it's very overwhelming. I went to kind of small high school, so you really hear everything, every program everyone's applying to what schools they're applying to sort of thing. There's a lot of pressure, not just from your teachers and stuff like that. But there's pressure on you from your parents, from your friends, because you want to make sure you make the right decision. Everyone makes it seem like if you don't go to university, it's the end of your life sort of thing. I ended up choosing Trent for one of their teaching programs.

1:04  
Students are under an enormous amount of pressure in high school when trying to decide what they want to do for the rest of their life. For Natalie, not only were her teachers a big pressure, but her parents and friends were as well.

1:17  
I think it would have been nice yes, to have pressure to say you know what, try to be the best that you can be. Try to figure out what it is exactly you like, but not oh, you have to do this for university. You have to write this essay for university. You have to get a 90 for university. There's just so much stress on that specifically, that your options aren't really open to anything else and it just puts a huge amount of pressure. I let too much of other people's opinions influence my decision, where I think it should have been, like 100% my decision without people influencing them.

1:51  
Once Natalie got to university, she realized just how different it was from high school.

1:57  
You really don't get tested and when I say tested, I mean challenged well in high school. I don't feel like you have to work really hard to do well and then once you go to university, it kind of changes on you. And you really do have to put 110% to make sure you're succeeding. You can't miss something or anything, like a lecture miss two lectures or don't do a reading and you're falling behind in the class. The problem with high school is there are certain credits that you need to meet, which is fine. That's what everyone has to meet. It doesn't give you too much room to grow and figure out what you like to do.

2:37  
Alysa Martinez is the current mentoring facilitator for Ryerson University's tri-mentoring program.

2:44  
The tri-mentoring program is a student transition support program for incoming first year students. Our main focus is to make sure that they have an easy transition from high school into university or whatever pathways they're deciding to come to university from. So some students are mature students who have already done post secondary at another institution and have switched into Ryerson. Wherever they're coming from, we just want to make sure that they get support as they come in. I think a lot of students come in thinking that they did really well in in high school, and they think they're going to do the exact same in university. And I think half of it is figuring out what you're experiencing in your transition. So is that that you don't have any friends here and you don't feel like you know anybody? Or is it that you have to figure out your way of studying ? Or you are all of a sudden experiencing feelings that you've never really had in high school and maybe you need counseling and don't know how to access that. So it's really just pinpointing like what they actually need and admitting that they may need support, and then kind of directing them to the right resources here. A lot of our resources are usually like one to one mentoring. So we offer that for incoming first year students, they get matched with an upper your student in the same program. So anyone who's in second year or above can be a peer mentor and they support that student overall in terms of providing resources providing support. It isn't academic support, like we make sure that our mentors aren't providing tutoring, but we want to make sure that they provide overall support to that student.

4:10  
Like Natalie, Alysa mentions that not all high schools are able to prepare students for the transition to university.

4:17  
That's a hard question. I feel like it depends on the high school you go to. I had some friends who went to a high school that was set up in a way where it was almost like university where there was a lot of independent learning, independent work and independent studying I would say. Where some high schools are still set up in the in the way where it's, it doesn't give you the same I guess experience or it just depends on the programs they have in place.

4:40  
Now that Natalie has taken a year off to figure out what she wants to do with her life. She feels ready to go back to school. 

4:47  
Recently is when I've been giving away more thought as to what I want to do in terms of going back to school. I've completely decided on a college program. The other thing was, these past three years, I have lived about two hours away from home. I think it probably beneficial for me to go back to my parents house, get a job there, and then commute to one of the closer colleges. I'll end up saving more money being happier, because I'm with my family and my friends and doing a program that is way more hands on that I like.

5:15  
When asked what high schools could do to start preparing students more for the transition into university, both Natalie and the Alysa had similar advice.

5:24  
A big part, I think, would be encouraging their students to even just go to the campus, even for the campus tours, which I think some students may not think are that helpful. But just getting a feel for what the campus is like in the culture that's there, I think would be really helpful. Because I think if I knew that, then I probably would have visited a lot more universities to see the kind of vibe that I wanted.

5:41  
Don't commit to something unless you are 100% sure that that's something you want to do. 

5:48  
So if you've found the school that you think you want to go to and the program, you want to go to, talk to the professor's there, research about the program. Ask students who are in the program in years above you get in contact and see what they think about the program and what classes you have to take. Because it's nice to get ahead and find out what it is really you're going to get yourself into. You might think, oh, this is so interesting, when really oh, this is so boring, or this is so not exactly what I thought it would be.