By JENNIFER GAYNOR

Higher education. That’s what we generally call the four years after secondary school, implying that college is the academic summit of one’s career as a student.

I never thought to question this — after all, it seems logical that school becomes progressively harder, with each year introducing more challenges and character-building experiences.

I completely expected that my academic knowledge base would continue to expand greatly once I packed up my belongings and moved to the illustrious land of higher education.

I was wrong.

I just graduated from college, and I can honestly say that I learned far more in two years of Advanced Placement classes at Starr’s Mill High School than at this state’s flagship institution.

Instead of furthering my appreciation for and competence in my chosen field of English, my major-level classes just reinforced what Fayette County had already taught me — for free.

Countless times as an undergrad, a tenured professor would explain a principle that Dr. Robert Covel unveiled to me in eleventh grade.

I read many a peer’s paper in which the errors that Ms. Cathy Nix weaned me from at Rising Starr appeared in abundance.

While classmates recorded the definitions of “opportunity cost” and Civil War facts, I nodded and mentally reviewed what I had already understood in the 800 Hall of Starr’s Mill.

The hard work and dedication of my high school Spanish teachers bumped me far ahead of most freshman language students.

In short, I never realized how good an education I received in high school until I reached what was supposed to be the best educational experience of my life — and it turned out to be a review.

Now, before you Georgia Tech or Emory alums snidely remark that my intellectual frustration may have to do with my specific alma mater, let me assure that my experience is certainly not unique to my university.

I stayed close friends with several of my Fayette crowd, and most of them have vented similar dissatisfaction with their chosen institutions. Since the chances are slim that my friends and I are all geniuses, the safe assumption is that we were simply better prepared for “higher” education than non-Fayette County students.

And it’s not just the high schools — I guarantee that the 5- and 7-year-old kids I babysit for know more about music theory, fractions and the solar system than many university freshmen, thanks to Peeples.

My 12-year-old cousin has more Word and Excel skills than most of my college friends, courtesy of Braelinn and Rising Starr.

Sometimes, sitting in a lecture hall, I even caught myself retrieving information from my days at Oak Grove a decade ago.

My objective is not to belittle college education, or defame my university. I learned invaluable lessons — academic as well as personal — in college, and there are students working assiduously there in all fields.

I merely mean to call attention to the fact that, however hard I worked or how much I learned, my college academic experience was always less challenging than my high school years. I was simply better prepared than most of my peers.

So perhaps, in addition to friendly faces and golf carts galore, our county offers educational opportunities that are rare and even unique within the state of Georgia.

Perhaps we should stop writing off public school as preparation and recognize it as a permanent foundation — one that, if you’re lucky enough to live in Fayette County, just might set you apart from your peers across the state.

Because despite the irksome dress codes and attendance checks, I must say most of us left this town with an incredible education.

And that’s one thing it did take me a college degree to realize.

Jennifer Gaynor contributed several columns to The Citizen while she was a student at Starr’s Mill High School. She plans to move to New York City and pursue a career in publishing.

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