Notre Dame Academy 2018 graduate Danielle Lippert attends Saint Norbert College, majoring in Business Administration with a minor in Communications and Media. 

Lippert’s favorite part of college has been the flexibility and being able to create her own schedule. 

“If I want to take all morning classes, I can. If I want to take all night classes, I can. It’s also all the classes that I love since they’re in my major and minor. Even with general education classes, we still have a lot of flexibility in what interests us,” she said.

College does have some hard times too. Lippert has struggled with not seeing her high school best friends.

“It’s so difficult because I go months without seeing them when I got so used to seeing them every day,” she said. “It’s definitely been an adjustment, and there are so many times that I wish they were a whole lot closer.”

The course load is another challenge that Lippert has dealt with throughout her college experience.

Lippert said, “I was used to having paper’s every once in a while and tests every once in a while, but in college, the tests are worth so much more. It’s much harder to get back up from a bad grade since the tests are sometimes worth over 10% of my grade.”

She met a lot of her close friends during welcome weekend at St. Norbert, and she had classes with those friends too. 

“I also loved meeting people in classes in my major. It’s great to have friends that are going through the same exact classes as you and have the same passions,” she said.

She shared a great relationship with her freshman roommate and commutes to school this year. 

Lippert said, “At night we’d always talk about our day as we got ready for bed. We definitely became close, and she was someone I could come back to after a weekend at home and just go ‘ugh, you’ll never guess what happened’ and vent it out and she’d listen to every word.”

NDA well prepared Lippert for all the papers she has to write. The many tips and tricks that the English teachers here shared with her helped her succeed in college. 

“Also, since I go to a Catholic college, the theology classes really helped. I only had to take one theology class, but it was so easy for me because of my previous years of Catholic schooling,” she said.”

Lippert misses how small NDA is and the fact that she knew everyone. She also misses some decisions being made for her in high school. 

“It was definitely a shock going from making only a few big decisions, to having to make all of them on my own,” Lippert explained. “I also miss the constant support I had from my teachers. I get that support from teachers in college, but the teachers in high school knew me so well by the end of my four years.”