High school is the final stepping stone that is meant to groom students to plunge into fast-paced college life as well-rounded young adults and functioning members of society. However, there are distinct ways I believe many schools fail to properly prepare students, and one of them is having unnecessarily strict policies and administration.

To clarify, I’m not talking about dress code or late work policies, I’m talking about the over-regulation of things that are either necessary or not nearly as monitored in college.

For example, when I began dual enrollment at the University of North Texas, it was a complete culture shock to me when I was permitted to simply walk out of the classroom to use the restroom. This seems so minuscule to me now, because using the restroom isn’t even a privilege, it’s a basic human necessity. However, in school, it’s presented as a commodity or transactional right.

An argument could be that this is the case so that students don’t use the restroom as an excuse to leave the classroom unnecessarily and miss work when I argue that having rules like this in place is what enables that behavior. 

At UNT, where I’m free to use the restroom whenever I please, I rarely find myself leaving a lecture. I know I am responsible for material, so naturally, if I don’t need to use the restroom I won’t go. However, at school, I am more compelled to use the restroom just to leave class because I see being allowed to leave the classroom as a privilege I must exploit. 

The bottom line goes beyond using the restroom though. This is just one example of how more trust must be placed in a student in order for them to be trustable. How are students expected to behave well to their own accord when administrators micromanage them this way?

It’s basic child psychology that the less a child is allowed to do, the more boundaries they’ll test and the more likely they are to rebel. The accountability must shift from the administrators to the students in order to truly prevent the behavior they don’t want to see. 

We are preparing to enter the world as adults, where there won’t be someone to hold our hand every step of the way. We must learn now to accept the natural consequences of our actions and have the freedom of choice in all situations because, in the real world, everything we do is a choice for which only we can take responsibility.