ADJUSTING TO COLLEGE LIFE

Left-over pizza, potato chips and a soda -- maybe not a normal breakfast, but perhaps a little more typical in the college environment.

Adjusting to college life may be difficult (if not interesting) for people who chose post-high-school education, but most students agree that the adjustment is much easier to endure for four or more years than dealing with the real world.

"I waited two years before I enrolled in college," said Kyla Bauman, 19, a freshman at Southeast Missouri State University. "It was a mistake; I should have just went right in to college."

Bauman, a 1992 graduate of Cape Central High School, said she spent the last two years working but got tired of the real world. "I wasn't making enough money, and I want more," she said.

Bauman said she has had no serious trouble adjusting to the college environment. She said the transition may have been easier if she would have continued as a student in college after being a student in high school. Easing her adjustment to college life after her two-year work experience led to her decision to attend the university in her hometown.

But most students have no major trouble making the jump into college life or returning to college life after a summer of living at home, even if college isn't in their hometown.

"I was anxious to get back," said Brian Hunt, 19, a sophomore from Florissant.

Hunt, who moved into the Sigma Chi fraternity house this semester, said he needed the structure of college -- and fraternity -- life. He said living at home with his parents was beginning to bore him. "I was looking forward to seeing my fraternity brothers again," he said.

Donta Harris, a junior from Florrisant, said college life has already lost its luster.

"This is my fourth year here," said Harris. "It's just back to the same old thing when classes started this fall."

Harris said he has moved off campus with two friends, and his "college life" has toned down. For his first two years at Southeast, he said he lived in Towers complex. "That was an adjustment to make after living at home," he said.

Burt Reynolds, a senior from Imperial, shouldn't have any trouble adjusting to college life at this stage in his college career, especially since Southeast is the third four-year institution he has attended since graduating from high school in 1990.

"I like it better here," Reynolds said. "Everyone here is a lot nicer."

Reynolds attended the University of Missouri-Columbia and University of Missouri-St. Louis before enrolling at Southeast. Reynolds said after attending the larger universities, adjusting to life at Southeast was much easier. Aiding his adjustment, he said, was his decision to move to Cape Girardeau at the beginning of the summer, after many students move back to their hometowns.