One thing I love about the professional world is that people assume I'm perfectly capable of doing basic research. In school they'd tell us to do our research, but then they'd tell us where to look, and in class they'd tell us what we should have learned. At work they just assume I can find stuff out.

For example, during my research for a medical text, I found out that a certain generic name of obscure (to me) anti-seizure medication corresponded with a certain brand name. When I mentioned this, no one was surprised. Then I found a list of all doctors of a certain gender, specialty, gender, and geographic region. Again, no one was surprised. The medication name took about 20 seconds and the list of doctors about 2 minutes, but in school that would have been considered going above and beyond, almost to the point of showing off. In the real world, it just means I'm not stupid and I know how to use Google. It's very refreshing.