What's the best advice you can give to college freshmen? What do you wish someone told you? What kept you going when you were on the verge of breaking down?
Don't fall behind - work can quite easily snowball
Determine your best study habits quickly, like what really works for you and what doesn't, to avoid wasting time.
Make sure your work is worthwhile, like hopefully you're working towards a degree or whatever that you actually want
Don't fuck around during class, actually take notes
Treat it like a full time job. Monday through Friday, ~9-5 ish type deal.
If you aren't in class or eating during that time, you should be studying.
Highschool is so piss-easy compared to college except for gen-ed classes, if you aren't prepared to do real studying for significant amounts of time then you are in for a rude awakening when you start taking on tougher classes.
You can drop out/ change degrees if you really want. You don't have to go to school, you're not committed to anything, other than loans depending on country.
I changed my degree like three times and currently am taking a break before finishing my engineering master's, wouldn't ever look back tbh.
make friends in your major. make friends with people in your year as well as upperclassmen. join a club ideally in your major
i cannot stress how much joining a computer science club helped me in uni. don't know how to do an assignment? ask the group chat. exams are coming and you haven't studied yet? ask some friends if they want to study or if they have old exams that you can study from. bored af on a friday? post "bars?" in the chat and see who wants to come. i am pretty sure that if i didn't have the friends i made in uni i probably would've failed or dropped out or something.
also don't be boring and focus on just school shit in uni. have fun, get fucking wasted some weekends. make friends with people who love to drink and party but also know when it's time to get serious about school work, trust me they exist.
remember that it's not alcoholism until you graduate
Go. To. Class. You're spending way too much money to be skipping out on lectures. Sometimes, just showing up will boost your grade.
Take the major you want, not the one you think you need. If you want to make it in underwater basket weaving, do that. You're young enough to change directions later in life if you want to. When you do, it's more important that they see you did something well.
out of state tuition is a scam, do anything you can to not pay it if it comes to that
some gen-ed classes, depending on your professor, will tell you to get a textbook but also say that test material is from their lectures -- in which case, skip the textbook. itll collect dust. for upper division classes, you can get away with renting, or buy it for cheap (if not a previous version). it'll make good additions to your library, if you're the reading type
go to class
If anyone in the administration tells you that your credits will transfer, make sure you get their name, and always get it in writing. Learned that one the hard way and essentially wasted three years.
1. I don't know if it's like this for other places, but online or blended classes are way easier than the only in person classes. In my case, every in person class I took I had to drive 30 min to campus stay
there for a couple hours because I was taking multiple classes, then when I got home I still had some kind of homework. I got tired of that shit so I only registered for online classes, now I maybe think
about my classes twice a week.
I've found that I learned just fine from reading the book, so lectures just felt like a waste of time.
2. You can pretty much cheat on any online test or exam.
For example one of my classes required you to download a browser that basically locks the screen so you can only have the test open. But all I had to do was start googling stuff on my phone or laptop.
Even for the proctored ones that require a webcam you can just have you phone next to your screen so it doesn't look like you're looking away.
3. If you decide to go to a university instead of a decent community college, you're kind of sacrificing your money in exchange for "the university life". Most people in the cheaper community colleges just want to do their classes and leave. You're far less likely to find any sick parties or anything.
When selecting your class schedule, only take one hard class at a time and make the others easy. This will help you maintain your GPA if that is important for future goals or programs. In other words, don't take all the hard classes at the same time.
Rubrics are your friends. If you are given a grading rubric for an assignment, it is basically a checklist you should go through before, during, and after the assignment and
just make sure you hit all the highest scoring categories.
Make it a point to attend whatever classes you can. Professors will often say things in class that will help you out on exams and other projects.
Make lists for yourself in order to help organize. Put due dates on your list items and check them off as you go, it will help you stay organized and on track.
If you find other people who have the same end goal as you, talk to them to find out what they're doing or what is on their radar. For example, if you are trying to get into a higher level program later on, taking to them could reveal important deadlines for prerequisites or other useful information.
Try to stay a chapter ahead of classes. I initially did this because I was expecting a trip sometime in the semester and I didn't want any catch-up to happen or a slip. It ended up having so many positives I didn't expect that I ended up passing the class with the highest score on the final of everyone that took it that semester.
Lectures turned into reviews and reinforcement of what I already know and as a great way to ask questions of what you're unsure of.
The amount of exposure time I had to each chapter was basically doubled from one week to two weeks, reducing the amount of studying I needed to do if any at all.
Pester your professor
After my second class I would have basically all day free so I'd go back to the other section and sit down and do homework in the classroom next to the teacher breakroom since it was empty most of the time except for night classes. If there is a limit to how often you can pester a professor before they start getting noticeably irritated, I have not yet found it. I did that every week for the entire semester for several hours and pestered him every 15~30 minutes.
Protein
It turned out that getting enough protein was just as important if not moreso than getting enough sleep. Lack of either kinda feels like the same thing too. Can't pay attention, feel sleepy.
It's easy to get bored during lectures. Any hint of it and my mind starts wandering off. Physically following along in the lecture in some manner is great at mitigating this. Half of the things I wrote during lectures were mostly half-finished equations or things I already did in the homework. Something I wouldn't call notes but useful in getting through a lecture most effectively for me.
I find that I do really poorly when I have lack of control of something. Back in high school it was frequent to have homework assigned one day and due the next. Basically you need to do it, no way to plan around it. In college, however, if a teacher assigns something and it's due less than a week later, that usually doesn't fly since a lot of people here are working people. So, most homework is due something like 2 weeks after it's assigned or better yet, it's all already in the syllabus and all the homework immediately accessible from day one. It lets life get in the way. Sometimes I'd find a great story with some length to it that I'd really like and binge it for four days straight. Finish it, then get homework done. Mood boosted and homework not late. Most of the time though I would finish before it's even assigned since I'd be using the syllabus to stay a week ahead.
If there's any takeaway from this, it's to be proactive rather than reactive in your learning.
I studied at university for 6 years, and never once in that time did I have my ‘sitting on a lawn on a sunny day, having a laugh with my multi-ethnic group of friends’ moment, which you see in virtually all promotional material made by unis.
So yeah, my advice is to not expect that
I've always believed the best approach was just Get hyped. Stand up straight. Be professional. Don't let anyone see you bleed. But I'm starting to think this macho-man garbage I'm coming up with couldn't really help anyone for long.
It's university, not the armed forces. I'm not sure how US Universities work, but I can't imagine people saying stuff like "Don't let anyone see you bleed" over here because it basically encourages bottling up everything and pretending weaknesses don't exist. One of the big problems that I've found students face from Day 1 of education, all the way to university, is that they're either afraid to seek help, or they're discouraged from doing sure. Sometimes they're not even aware the services exist.
For general advice, it's easy to see 3-4 years (or whatever) as a lot of time, and I know many people that plan on doing nothing until two weeks before their final exams. Um, don't do that? It seems like obvious advice but if it was really so obvious, less people would act so recklessly. Also, know the content. This isn't high-school/A-Levels where a general understanding of concepts will suffice; there's a reason you're not doing 10+ other subjects in the background.
Coffee/caffeine pills, go to any study labs available with tutors, go to the gym available on campus and work out, focus on your fucking work and don't smoke while class is going on, keep an agenda, schedule your day, do work-study if available on campus, join clubs on campus, eat well and stay hydrated, don't become distracted on your devices: you're there to learn, get a degree and hopefully rake cash.
Do not fall behind on your course work. Once you do it only gets harder to catch up. Happened to me every math course.
Make some friends in things you like. I was involved in marching, jazz, and symphonic bands all 4 years. Best people I've met. My most of my computer science peers were insufferable to talk to. Made friendly enough with a couple that I ended up taking most of those classes with.
IDK if you've ever lived away from your family, but keep on top of the little life maintenance things like laundry and cleaning. Your dorm/apartment will slowly stink and you will go nose blind.
Do not become a habitual procrastinator, it becomes a life habit and it's hard to work out of. I became one during college.
Learn to cook. IDK if have a meal plan on campus, or live off campus with a kitchen. There's a lot of good food you can make easily for very little. I personally can feed myself and 4-5 friends for under $25.
If you do have a meal plan, do not put on 'the freshman 15', I'm currently trying to work my way down on what is a satisfying amount of food after having 'all you can eat' available to me for years. I was already chunky going in and being able to have a root beer float with every meal caught up very quickly.
Most importantly ask for help if you need it. Professors want to help you. But you must ask. I was too proud to ask for help and my GPA suffered for it.
I'm going to reiterate talking to your profs/instructors. Most people in academia choose this line of work because they enjoy teaching/mentoring.
Grades are important, but not everything. Part of what you're doing is developing a network of contacts. Years from now few people will give a shit about whether you had a 2.7 or a 3.9 GPA. People are going to be more concerned with what you've done and who you know.
American universities/colleges are a puzzle to me but basically:
Make friends
Have fun
Do your (second) best
Studies
Social Life
Sleep
pick two.
Make sure to allot time throughout the week for course work. Use your first two weeks of the semester to get a feel for the classes and their requirements. I've had plenty of classes where I didn't even need to bother reading the book, to classes where you absolutely had to read the book and all the footnotes. Over time you'll get a feel for what classes require more attention than others.
Make sure you do have a day/time set of decompression. I usually reserved about 1-2 hours each night for gaming, watching TV, or relaxing. I also had 1 day a week where with the exception of an hour or two of homework I did whatever.
This was from me both working full time as a manager and going to school full time. The biggest thing is just compartmentalizing your schedule. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just have to have some sort of organization so that you can deal with school in little chunks here and there rather than try to face a week as a whole.
Get a calendar and fill it out
im not sure what you are trying to get out of college, but for me coming into college I had the intentions of attending graduate school. I just finished applying to a bunch of PhD programs and reflecting on my undergraduate years, nearly all of my undergrad years were spent in constant anxiety about graduate admissions, and it feels like i just went through college not to learn and cultivate my own scientific curiosity, but just to get into graduate school. I feel like if I would have stopped and really "learned" first and worried about getting into grad school second I would have been much happier, less anxious, and I probably would have learned more. I wish I could go back in time and convince myself to learn first and worry about what you are going to do after college second. I really only escaped this mindset over the summer when I was at an REU (they are like a summer internship for the sciences) where I really started to realize just how detached I had become from the original reason I liked physics in the first place.
TLDR: In college, focus on learning and improving your skills FIRST, and focus on what to do with them SECOND
Go to class, please.
It infuriates me seeing how many people show up to one of every 4 classes, say they'll cram before the exam, fail the course and complain "lmao fuck this prof"
Gonna say something that a lot of people are gonna hate me for but I'm nothing if not a person who stands by their word;
If you are doing the soft sciences, humanities or arts, be aware that these degrees do not hold as much weight as STEM degrees in the job market. When you pay to go to university you are making an investment in your future and you don't want to make bad investments.
Yes, there is an argument to be made that in an ideal world universities are a place to develop academically and you shouldn't worry too much about your future prospects as it's more important to develop as a person and not worry about massive loans and fees, but that's simply not the case for most people and you have to be realistic, you don't live in an ideal world.
This is not to say you should not study non-STEM subjects, of course, but it's important to realise that today's job market is not exactly overflowing looking for anthropologists, sociologists, specialists in English literature or whatever so don't expect go get a job directly in those fields because the simple fact is that there is oversaturation in these industries. You will still learn valuable skills if you are going to a half-decent university and you can build upon those skills to make yourself a good candidate for other jobs, you just gotta work it more.
Of course if you study in a place where university is either free or so cheap that it may as well be free disregard that entirely and study whatever the hell you want.
Plan out the exam session, give yourself 2 weeks to prepare for each exam, make an excel sheet or mark the days in a calendar. It really helps you to keep organized and just be aware at all times of what you have to do, which also is a strong motivator.
Well, don't do what I have done right now and postpone learning for an exam 9 hours before it starts.
Go to office hours. It's easier to keep up than to catch up. Have some outlet to take your focus if you're feeling burned out.
Just reading this thread gives me anxiety. I don't know if I'd be cut-out for college eating up all of my free-time for the next couple of years.
Don't force yourself to do anything, learn to study out of intrinsic motivation instead of external motivation. Shit gets so easy after that's tackeld. Once you've got that down you can easily study every day without feeling anxious, stressed, or annoyed. Enjoy your no-stress study experience while everyone else tries to catch up at the last moment.
Also, a degree is like a marathon, but studying is like high-intensity interval training. Take recovery in-between sets.
Been doing this for 2 years now and am not taking an easy program either, and I'm at a 80% average across all courses. Play it smart, and be consistent / sustainable in the long run.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
