Alright, so your setting takes place in America. The problem is, you've never been there, and your only point of reference is Hollywood movies. Or... your characters are in college, problem is, you've never been. How about adulthood? Being a Parent? Being in Graduate school? Being a teacher? Healthcare?
Well, I'm an American, a parent, I've worked in healthcare, currently in graduate school, and have experience with teaching both at a high school and college level. So, here is the inside scoop, and hopefully it will help you learn how to write in my shoes.
I started writing this intending it to all be one chapter, but after writing 10 pages of stuff on schools alone, I am going to break it up into pieces and release chapters 1 at a time. So this is just the first installment of the "in America" series.
US Schools -
The education system in America is basically built around a 12 grade system. You start in Kindergarten, although if you are in the right district or have sufficient money, there is also preschool. This time prepares them for school, acclimating students to classes. I entered my kid into a 2 year kindergarten class at the age of 5 (young 5). They usually start 1st grade around the age of 6-7 and then proceed through 6 grades known as elementary school. These can be broken up into a lot of different ways. When I went to school, 6th grade was in elementary school, but switch to be considered a middle school class. My son's school serves K-2, forcing you to enter a different elementary school at 3rd grade.
However, typically K-5 is elementary, 6-8 is considered middle school, and 9-12 is high school. 9 is freshman, 10 is sophomore, 11 is junior, and 12 is senior. If you are forced to take another year for failure to complete, you are sometimes called a super-senior. You then have the choice to go out into the work place, start a technical school, or go to college. Technical schools are very specific educations, and differ a lot from school to school, so I don't have much I can say about them. College in the USA is incredibly expensive, and is becoming more greatly demanded than ever before. While certain colleges are hard to get into and demanding, if you manage okay grades, chances are you shouldn't have problems getting into a state school. You will need to take one of two exams to qualify for college, either the SATs, or the ACTs. Which is more important depends on the region. I've taken both and I couldn't really tell you the difference between one or the other.
Private schools and out-of-state schools cost a lot of money, like $30,000 a year. Public in state schools are about $8,000 a year. Some states have agreements with each other to consider neighbors in state, but that's another matter entirely. Once you get into college, you select a major where you finally specialize in something. While you can select and focus a little in high school, there is limited ability to do that. College is the first real chance to specialize in a skill.
You can go to college for an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, or a license or certificate. Associate's degrees (which take 2 years to earn) and certificates are often provided by community colleges. They are often more utilitarian than universities. They teach you the skill sets necessary to do a job, like nursing or engineering. They don't offer a broad perspective or try to teach you to critically think like bachelor's degrees strive for.
Bachelor's, on the other hand, take the full 4 years to earn. They take place at universities (although you can earn some bachelor's at community colleges, but they usually require some kind of agreement with a local university). Like high school, there is freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior, ending with a degree that you are handed.
You can then choose to enter the work force of move towards you masters. A masters is not required for a doctorate. It's a substitute for workplace experience. It allows you to get some critical thinking skills, some work experience, and some development behind the relative safety of a school. In truth, most jobs will substitute a masters with the equivalent amount of time (3 years) of work experience. You don't technically need a masters or work experience to get into a pHD program, but it wouldn't be easy to get accepted without. You'd have needed to work through college to show how you are genuinely interested in the area.
There are some exceptions. MDs tend to enter medical school strait out of bachelors. Lawyers as well. They all have special examinations, the MCATs or the LCATs to qualify for school. Graduate students also have an examination required to get into graduate school called the GRE.
So what does all this education mean to you? I always like to teach my students a little trick. You see, as you progress and get your degrees, you're going to get disenchanted when you realize how unqualified you are for the workplace. People seem to think a degree = a job. That by having one and being part of the 5% of the population who has a bachelors that somehow makes you special and more qualified for a job. Unfortunately, that's not true. You see, degrees are a minimum requirement. That means if you have a bachelors and you apply for a job that needs bachelors, so does everyone else. Also, if you have a bachelors and apply for jobs that don't need one, you may find yourself not being hired on the principal of being overqualified. That's the disenchantment. A high school diploma, an associates, a bachelors... those are a minimum requirement necessary to allow you to apply to certain jobs. After getting passed that, then comes the hard part of painfully over the course of years gaining experience.
So here's a little tidbit of info... what does each degree mean, and why do you earn them?
A High School diploma means that you are capable of learning. Yes... there is a certain base of knowledge you gain from high school. Hopefully you can divide, and know something about science and mastery of the language from which you speak. However, the main thing is that you have shown by the end of high school you can be taught new information and retain it. That's why jobs that don't require at least a High School degree are meaningless brainless jobs a monkey can do. Those people haven't shown they can learn new information. Through experience, you can prove to a company you have those skills without a High School degree... but you have no tangible proof and will always start at the bottom of the totem pole.
So you move up and earn an associates degree. To me, an associates is a glorified HSD. It tells the employer that you can learn complex tasks. This is why you need at least an associates to work as a nurse or an engineer. You need to learn complex, multitasked projects. You increase your base of knowledge, but focus it in the area you need.
A bachelor's degree tells an employer that you can troubleshoot. That's why bachelors tend to be managers and supervisors, people allowed to be in charge. They have proven they have critical thinking skills. They can have things go wrong, and resolve those things. Often times, there skillset gets focused on a specific area, and depending on the job, that focus is important for your ability to troubleshoot problems. Like I mentioned before, with experience, an associates can be trusted and treated like a bachelors, but that takes time and working from the bottom up to gain your employers trust.
A Masters, as I mentioned before, proves you have real world experience. It proves you can work in this field. You've done it, you can do it some more. 3 years of real world experience can negate a masters. However, a masters is a heck of a lot more tangible than 3 years of anecdotal experience, so it can be superior in that respect.
And finally, the top level, pHD. It requires around 5 years of additional education and most people don't achieve it until they are in their 30s if not older. A pHD says you have the ability to create. It says you can take the parts, and turn it into a whole. For a MD, you can take a bunch of symptoms, and turn it into a diagnosis. If you a scientist, it means you can take a bunch of data, and turn it into a conclusion. That's what a doctorate means.
High Schools-
Now let's take a step back, and go through what like is like in a High School. There are private and public schools. Private schools vary with each school, and can vary substantially. With regard to public schools, each state (there are 50 in all) differ in how they handle the education system. Typically, most high schools are enslaved with something called "zero tolerance" which started as a result of the columbine shootings that occurred in the 90s (I was actually a student when they happened, so this is first-hand knowledge).
Basically, if you are found with a weapon, or threaten someone, or risky the safety of the school, it gives the school the right to suspend/expel without a need for a trial. There is zero tolerance, so someone who takes a knife to school is treated like someone who takes a water gun to school. There is still prejudice, and people are people, so this allows teachers to walk all over student rights, punishing problem students with full capacity of the law while ignoring other students. This also leads to random instances when students are sometimes targeted for minor discretions, then treated like flat out criminals.
We hear stories every day of school acting completely irrationally. People are people after all, even teachers and deans, and this leads to some pretty outrageous claims, like a kid who got suspended for biting his bread into the shape of a gun... Hall inspections are frequent. All the doors to all the classes are shut and police walk down the halls with dogs. Anyone caught outside of class immediately gets pulled into the principal's office, while any sign of drugs from the dogs will cause them to pull the students out of class to check their car in the parking lot or lockers. Police and security in high schools can be severe, and they have a "guilty until proven innocent attitude. (Their words, a cop actually told me this)
In the old days, there were 8 45 minute classes scattered throughout the day. More recently, they've switched to block scheduling. In block scheduling, you have 4 classes MW, 4 classes TH, and then Friday would be an oddball day, either have A or B or having shorted periods A-B. They meet five days a week, and while all the core classes such as English, math, and science are mandatory, by your junior and senior years you do get some flexibility. You can enter AP classes, which are college level high school classes that end with an AP exam. You must get a 4 or 5 out of 5 for college to accept an AP credit, and even then they may not. You can also take physical college courses at a local college if you play your cards right.
Each high school has different requirements for graduating based on the state. Mine required two courses of PE, which I did during the summers so I wouldn't have to do them and be sweaty at school. You also need some credit of a language, which is usually French or Spanish. Access to other languages, Chinese, Russian, Japanese... are a lot more difficult to find, since instructors for these are often very limited. If you go to a good school and get lucky, great, otherwise you're out.
The grading system has slowly been converting to a 10 point scale. Less than 60% is an F, 70% D, 80% C, Less than 90% is a B, and 90-100% is an A. The system used to have a different grading system, where 93% was the threshold for A or B. Different schools handle things differently. My college only has A, B, C, D, and F. The high schools I went to had A-, A+, B-, B+ ect between the letter grades. I had one school that and AB, BCs, CDs, DFs, instead of the + or -.
The school cliques are not nearly as prevalent as depicted on TV. While people that have similar tastes, race, ect... will stick together, there is a fair amount of cross cliquing. Most people associate themselves with the clubs there in. The marketing club had its people, football had its people, dance had its people. However, who you hung out with throughout the day really depended on what classes you were in. Lunch alone at our school had three separate periods. The 3rd Block, period 3, was usually broken into thirds. Some people would go to lunch at the end of block 2, some would leave in the middle of block 3 and then return, and some would go to lunch at the last third of block 3. That meant that any friends you had could easily have lunch during a time you didn't.
As far as the jocks, nerds, ect... they didn't exist. Or rather, they were far more broken up than that. All jocks don't hang together. Some football players might. Meanwhile basketball players would hang out with other basketball players. Honors students might hang with other honors students. Nerds and geeks, so to speak, were incredibly shattered. They're already very antisocial, you think antisocial kids would be able to get together and form a large group? No, you have the magic: the gathering card players (Or pokemon back in the day) You also have nerds who just read by themselves. You have the nerds who like anime, and then the nerds who like video games.
It's all over the place, and any given school might have a half dozen jock groups, another half dozen nerd groups. There is also no real rivalry going on. While there is bullying, most schools official policy is to not tolerate it. Thus it is far more subtle and behind the scenes. No wedges and swirlies. In reality, it's spreading malicious rumors, ostracizing people in groups, mocking them, or embarrassing them, throw spitwads and the like. It's also just as likely to be a small kid picking on a big kid versus the other way around.
Anyway, back to rivalry, there really isn't any. There is no jocks versus the nerds. In most cases, jocks don't care about nerds, and nerds don't care about jocks. There is no fighting, jocks don't go after groups of nerds in the hallway. The stuff depicted in Glee is nonexistent. In most cases, it's usually one person, picking on some other person, and no one realizes it, or they ignore it because it doesn't affect them.
Anyway, that's all I can really say about it. Homeroom met on Fridays, once a week, but was barely a class, it was mostly there as a place holder for when they wanted to throw an assembly. Other than that, it was your typical class schedule. 1 hour twenty minutes of each subject, English, math, history, science, foreign language. The teachers varied from good to bad. Most of them treated it like a job, which it is to them. A lot of exams took the form of short answer or multiple choice. When you got multiple choice, you'd get a sheet called a scantron, which allowed them to grade all of the papers really quickly.
Books are assigned. Most of them were used and beat up, but every now and then you'd luck out and get brand new ones ordered in the last few years. You could take the books home or leave them in your locker. You rarely had time to get to a locker in between classes, so chances are you would carry all your books for the day in your large backpack. As the digital age becomes more prevalent, and tablets show up in more schools, I don't know how that is going to change. In my day, high schools didn't have wifi or Ethernet ports. I imagine they are becoming more and more prevalent these days.
There are groups of students that are bound for college, either because they are very smart, or pressured heavily by their parents. Some have parents that will pay or at least help pay some of the cost of college. There are also a fairly large portion of kids ready to join the workforce with no desire/motivation to go to college. Some have plans, many don't.
Teacher Perspective -
In order to become a teacher, typically you require a full 4 year degree on top of fulfilling a teacher education requirement. It can actually be quite tedious, and most teaching positions require proficiency in at least two areas. As everything, it changes from state to state. At the high school level (where I was trained), you could also earn a broad science licensure which qualified you to work in all science related classes. The teaching licenses were age based, which was basically broken up as grammar school K-6, Middle School, and High School levels.
On top of that, being more qualified makes it harder to actually find a job. At a public school level, pay is usually tiered. So a teacher with a masters, more years of experience, or better credentials HAS to be paid more. As a result, schools will deliberately hire less qualified teachers, or fire good teachers, in order to meet the bottom line.
Teachers are people too, believe it or not. They can be wrong as much as you can be. They can have pride as much as you can. Teenagers.... Are really crappy people. You may think you're all nice and altruistic, but teenagers tend not to treat teachers very well, and as a result they get crapped on and abused daily.
On top of that, parents frequently side with kids over teachers. A teacher speaking ill of a kid makes a parent feel like they were a bad parent. So a teacher hurts a parent's pride, and then the parent gives the teacher hell for it.
So if your teachers are stressed out, tired, or angry... know that they have a lot of crap to deal with. You are one of like 200 students they deal with every day, and even if you are a perfect butterfly, there is a good chance they've had to deal with 20-30 other people who aren't.
Mind you, I'm not excusing teachers. I think a lot of teachers don't put as much into their job as they should. There are lazy teachers, whiny teachers, and immature teachers. Hanging around immature kids all day sometimes rubs off, and teachers who can't separate themselves well can become immature themselves. It's really easy to start acting like a 5 year old when you're dealing with a 5 year old, and teachers have to constantly reality check themselves to make sure they are responding maturely.
Teaching jobs are not terribly difficult. Stressful, yes, but not terribly difficult. Work as a nurse for a while, which makes about the same pay with crappier hours, where "cleaning up human feces" and dealing with adults with dementia is a daily occurrence, and tell me how difficult it is to deal with snotty teenagers and then get the whole summer off.
That being said, there are great teachers out there who try to do a little better every day and work their butts off, putting their own money into making the experience fun. Then there are others who just phone it in. The lesson I'd give is give the teachers a break. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Go up to your teacher and tell her that her lesson was really thought out and you enjoyed it. I guarantee you whether she reacts to it or not, you'll have made her day.
College -
And now we are on to college. I already explained how there are 4 year universities and 2 year community colleges. Community colleges are basically commuter colleges, which means you live off compass and have your own life. Universities are a conglomerate of numerous colleges, and will be have students from on and off campus. These are the more Hollywood versions of a University, complete with dorm rooms and fraternities.
You can rent your own place, or you can pay room and board and live in a dorm. Fraternities/sororities exist as well, but I never had any interest/exposure to them. You can buy meal plans of any size, which will allow you to visit all of the on campus eating areas. Most on campus diner areas are designed around being both for students and for faculty, so they deal in money as much as dinner points. Figuring out what offers what is part of the game. Some on campus food places won't even accept you meal plans.
I've been to a college that only have one cafeteria, and I've been to others that have had multiple. Some of them have real fast food joints. The one I'm going to now has had a Tim Hortons, a Jaba Juice, a Starbucks, a Mcdonalds, a Pizza Hut, a burger king, and a skyline chili in it. Not all at the same time. I find that the turnover rate for fast food places is insane on campus. Plus, sometimes they'll give you campus supply food (from whoever supplies the cafeteria) instead of the fast food places food. Our burger king doesn't give burger king fries, they give campus fries. Our taco bell doesn't give normal nachos, they give tortilla bag nachos. That kind of thing.
Anyway, an incoming freshman usually has some kind of "enrollment day" where all the freshman come in and enroll together. They have sign up booths. They guide you around. You get a mix of everything campus has to offer. There is also "move in weekend" where everyone moves into their respective dorms. This all takes place usually a few days before the first day of classes. You also are assigned an advisor usually related to your major. They have to approve of the classes you're going to take before you can sign up to them.
You can declare your major right away, or you can wait a bit. There a plenty of requirements you need to take before focusing on your major. You get a big list of requirements, and then you start lining up your classes. Some complain that the first two years of undergrad are very repetitive and you're repeating everything you did in high school. I don't really agree with this, but it all depends on what level you were at when you entered. At this point, it's on you to select what you want to take, and make sure it fits in the schedule. Classes are not offered every semester, so you first need to make sure a class is being offered, then you need to make sure that the class being offered fits schedule-wise with all the other classes you are signing up for.
Now a days, you sign up online through a student portal, which often also allows you to access the library, see your grades, and check your student email. Then you take your classes. They can fall any time. And you will find semesters where you have no class on this day or only one class on that day. It's a great feeling to have all of that free time. Enjoy it... cause this is really the only time in your life when you do have that much free time, which if your motivated, you'll be using to study. If you're not, you'll be using it to play around in clubs.
Classes usually fall on two schedules. MWF classes which are about 50 minutes long each, or TH or MW classes which fall about 1 hour and 20 minutes each. Certain classes, based on credit hours, can also have discussion groups and labs associated with them. Labs can be 1-2 3 hour sessions a week and discussion groups are usually like another class.
Classes are typically taught by professors and faculty. This usually means a pHD. GTAs usually teach labs. This isn't set in stone, and who teaches who what can fluctuate from year to year based on the universities need. You actually will have the opportunity at the end of class to critique your professors. They always give you a form to fill out. I can't actually remember if high schools do that too.
As far as student life, dorm rooms are very small. Usually two people are given a space of roughly 200 square feet. Bathrooms are down the hall. You can pick you roommate if you plan ahead of time and you can request specific rooms, much like requesting a seat on an airplane. The older you are, the more priorities you get. So Seniors get first pick over juniors, sophomores, and freshman. Usually, by the senior year, most students no longer live in the dorms. They find friends and rent a place together or come up with some other plan. There are a few older students found in the dorm rooms through. Many become RAs because it offers them free room and board that semester.
Universities regularly throw events. The first week of the new semester, they have a few festivals where each of the clubs show their wares. You also have a ton of smaller events that you pick up on throughout the year, from guess speakers to plays to musician visits. The larger the school, the more impressive the events. In one of the universities I lived in, they lived about an hour from a much larger university, and people would leave for the weekend to go there to party. Another university I lived was in a very mountainous region, and hiking and nature trails were common.
Every university typically has its own thing. It has its own unique atmosphere, its own traits, and its own lore. Universities are often fairly large complexes of many different buildings. Each building is usually named after a generous benefactor that donated money to the university. Most universities have a Student Union, which is the main building. It often has the cafeteria in it, and is the nicest and best decorated building. It's the place most people see when they visit a university and that's why they try to keep it nice.
Of the many universities I've work at, some consist of mostly stand-alone buildings. One was all interconnected with massive bridges from building to building so you never had to go outside. Another had an underground labyrinth of interconnected pathways which accomplished the same task of not needing to go outside. Another one I went to was actually combined with a hospital, although that was a medical school so you got to give them credit for that. Most of the other buildings are fairly standard. Some look like art projects done to prove they can be done, but that often has its own list of problems.
We have a building in our university that was built not too long ago to be a herald of eco-friendliness. They ended up having to go in and tear out walls and put up scaffolding, because the place started collapsing under its own weight. Many buildings are dedicated to classrooms and lecture halls, but you will also see buildings dedicated to labs and buildings dedicated to offices for the various employees.
Universities are a business after all, and while there are faculty, who mostly worry about research and classes. There are also janitors, HR reps, secretaries, and the lot all working at the university as well. Undergrads often get jobs working the cafeterias. There are also UTA jobs (undergraduate teaching assistants) and more.
There is a bit of a "weeding out" process that occurs that first year of school. A lot of students who slipped into college when college really wasn't for them end up failing out that first year. It isn't necessarily that college is "difficult". It's that every high school has their own standard that may or may not match a professor's standards. Most professors try to be fair, comparing and curving grades for the entire class. You don't need to be as smart as your professor expects, just as smart as the rest of the students in your class. It would look bad for a professor if everyone was failing his class, so they can curve pretty heavily.
That being said, curving is the act of altering grades to fit a bell curve. I've never met a professor that would decrease someone's grade as a result of curving. It only benefits you. How much it benefits you depends on where you fall on the curve. Usually, the highest grade in class (minus an extreme outlier) will have points added up to 100% and then everyone else will get the same. Every class is different and every professor is different. Some offer a 10% curve to everyone, usually because people actually need it to pass their class.
Clubs and club activities are another part of college. A lot of people will pressure you to join a club, any club. Honestly, clubs take all shapes and sizes, and there can literally be a club for anything. Unlike high school, where clubs show an initiative to getting accepted into college, there is no real benefit to being in a club in college, except for your personal enlightenment. Some exceptions, like college football players, exist. Clubs can take all forms, from language clubs, wicken clubs, D&D clubs, and more.
Anyway, I'm sure there is tons more to say, but that's honestly all I have to say on university education system.
Until you get Graduate school...
So what's different about graduate school? Well, you have to take classes, but there is usually a fairly limited number you need to take. Grades stop mattering. They become irrelevant next to your research. You are expected to get As or Bs to pass. A C is considered a fail, and if you GPA falls below a 3.0 you start having issues. Research and research history are what are important towards the future. You are more or less on your own. You find a mentor, beg them to let you join their lab, and then you work with them towards you degree. You are in control of it, and it's up to you to stand up and do things yourself.
Classes become less and less structured. Many of them have multiple professors. I've had classes with as many as 10 different professors, each teaching a different lecture. You also get less oversight.
That's really about it. Your research is your life. You are technically only required to be there like 20 hours a week, but anyone who isn't going like it's a fulltime job isn't going to make it through the program. You need to read, research on your own, and become a doctor in your own right. That's the program.
Anyway, that's all of my thoughts on the American school system. Hope that helps you. Nothing I've said is 100% definitive. They are only my experiences within the US Midwest. Each state is different and does things a little differently. However, the more knowledge you have, the better armed you are, so go off and write now with a little more confidence. I'll see you in my next installment of In America.