24 Clues College Seniors
Wish They'd Had As Freshman
Why are you doing this? To learn lots of information? We don't think so. The reasons for going to college are:
- To meet lots of interesting people, some of whom will become lifelong friends.
- To gain an enlarged view of a "getting smaller" world. (Wherever you are in college, you are one stop or less from every major world market.)
- To learn how to learn. Everything you'll learn later, you'll teach yourself. Business, industry, and the professions will not accept less.
- To discover and explore more of yourself than you normally could at home.
- To acquire at least a dilettante's knowledge about a lot of different things. Being informed really beats the heck out of being ignorant and shallow.
- To learn how to handle adult responsibilities while still enjoying a semi-protected environment.
- To identify and explore career options.
You have four years--just four years--to fashion yourself into the kind of person you'd like to be for the better part of your adult life. You could reinvent yourself later at age 30 or 40, people do; but, then look at all the time you lose.
- Forget who you were in high school. This is your chance to start over and to be whomever you want. This is one of the few fresh starts you'll get in life.
- The college years are so formative, for most people, that you need to be fully conscious of these years' decisiveness and act accordingly.
- If you party away your four years, you end up with lots of good-time memories, but you also end up intellectually stunted and disadvantaged when you go out looking for the job that will mark your entry into your first career field.
- People don't get hired for being party animals. They are hired for being sharp, articulate, responsible, and ambitious. By the way, people hire people, not degrees. And, frankly, you'll get hired only for what you can do for the employer.
- These college years are defining years for you, far more than were your high school years. Your college record is what graduate schools and potential employers look at, not your high school record which becomes irrelevant on your first day of college.
- You, statistically, will change jobs 12 times in your adult life and five of those will be changes in career fields. The position you ultimately acquire probably doesn't exist yet. Learn to become the kind of person you would hire if you were the employer.
Which brings me to . . .
Watch how they work and when they work and where they work. They'll be the ones graduating in four years and getting the best jobs or going to the best graduate schools.
- Try to work right alongside them. Keep similar hours. Let their habits and attitudes rub off on you.
- Much of what we call "a college education" consists of four things:
- Learning how to study-how to concentrate for progressively longer periods of time (many good students have 7 minute attention spans--the result of years of watching TV where commercials run roughly every 7 minutes).
- Learning how to postpone gratification--your whole life is ahead of you. You don't have to experience everything in college.
- Learning how to learn, that is--what to do when you don't know what to do--is the key to your future. It is reading, writing, computing, communicating, and reasoning at a very high level.
- Learning how to teach yourself. Much of what you learn in college and 99% of what you'll learn later in life, you'll teach yourself.
The two best ways to ensure that you get a great education are (a) hang out with smart, studious classmates, and (b), take courses from superb teachers. You need to shop for teachers even more than courses. Here's how:
- Read the course descriptions posted outside department offices.
- Ask older students who their favorite teachers are and why. Record the information in a "Best Teachers/Best Courses" notebook. Look for courses taught by these teachers.
- Drop by the various deans' offices and get lists of who's won teaching awards.
- Read the Course/Instructor student evaluations. Most colleges keep such information available to the public--ask for it and be persistent.
- Still be cautious--visit each prospective teacher on your list. Ask to see their course syllabus that will reveal the texts and reading assignments. See if you feel comfortable with that professor.
In high school, you were probably a passive learner. Most high school students are passive learners. You were bored; you simply had too many unmotivated teachers and silly assignments; you were treated like children; you had no sense of freedom. In such an environment, it's easy to blame others. That has to stop in college!
- In college, you have infinitely more freedom-for better or worse. Exercise initiative. Be a demanding, cost-conscious consumer.
- Make it your business to get the best teachers. Pursue them and persuade them to let you into their courses. Show them that you're serious.
- Take all your core curriculum as soon as possible and get it over with--you'll be real glad you did, but you'd only know that if you didn't . . . take our word for it.
- Become familiar with all the services your college provides: guidance and other counseling services, writing help programs and tutoring resources, career services, etc. Know every inch of the library (and become friends with the librarians). Read your campus mail and bulletin boards.
- Start papers and study for exams early. Come to class prepared.
- Learn to love the whole process of education, not just the product. It's like learning to love the exercise room instead of just the cosmetic result in your body.
Read them thoroughly-twice-right away. Know them cold! They're legal contracts. They tell you how you'll be graded, what paper requirements there are, what the exams will involve, absence policies and more.
- Hundreds of students each year discover, often too late, a monumental goof-up--e.g., that they're not actually enrolled in a course they thought they were. Or, they never actually dropped a course they thought they had. Or, their grade in the course is wrong and the prof has already gone.
- Double-check course numbers.
- Double-check class schedules.
- Double-check paper and exam grades and the arithmetic used to determine the course grade.
- Should you ever be absent, call them (get two perspectives) to find out what you missed and get copies of their notes.
- Don't ask the professor, "What did I miss Tuesday?"--or, worse yet, "Did I miss anything important on Tuesday?"
- If you have to miss class, tell your professor in advance as a courtesy.
Take it everywhere! Pride yourself on keeping a complete record of what's ahead: paper deadlines, exams, appointments, things to do, people to call, etc. SUCCESS frequently and simply comes down to being well organized.
You're in college, in part, to forge yourself into a smarter-seeming person. One way is by expanding your vocabulary-learning the language of college -educated people.
- Take that dictionary and thesaurus with you everywhere! Pack with them a small notebook to record the words you look up, plus a quick definition for each.
- Pride yourself on how many new words you learn each week--it's an excellent measure of your intellectual growth.
Some colleges now require every entering freshman to own one.
- There are thousands of great discounts on computers and software. Some people are constantly upgrading, so there are super bargains on excellent used hardware.
- Save all papers and make back-up disk copies.
- Spell check is not 100% (there, they're, their).
- Computers are an incredible time-saver like cooking with a microwave as opposed to cooking over a campfire which brings me to . . .
- Computers are multitasking tools, not just fancy typewriters. Everybody uses them for everything: lawyers, accountants, architects, professors, engineers, physicians, mechanics, hobbyists, garbage collectors, etc.
- Don't waste thousands of hours keyboarding by the hunt & peck method. Take a touch-typing course via a computer program or enroll in a local junior college in your college town. Doubling your typing speed will save you 100's of hours over four years. It'll be one of the smartest things you ever do in your life. Don't put it off. It's critical to your academic and party-time success.
- Bring course texts. You might get to use them. (Ask, "Is this an open-book exam?")
- If you can use your text, you'd better be real familiar with it. Time is consumed very fast during an exam when you have to read the text or hunt for your information.
- Ask if you can use your dictionary, thesaurus, and calculator.
Professors become attracted to your interest in their subject. It's worth, students and professors say, at least, three points on your final grade if the professor knows you.
If you have back-to-back classes and your first professor keeps you overtime, stay an extra minute or two, but no longer.
- Your job is to be in your seat, notebook open, and ready to learn when the bell rings for your next class. Be professional!
- Students who drag in late can be infuriating to fellow students as well as to the professor.
Athletes invest 3-4 hours a day in their sport, and many carry very high GPA's, so surely you can wedge in an hour or two.
- You'll concentrate better, have more energy, be more flu resistant, and look better.
- Hard exercise is a substantial stress reliever and helps time management.
- Many students make their best grades when they have the most to do.
- Intramurals are social events. You'll meet smart people fast.
- "Work your work, and play your play." Do both with intensity.
- In high school, you probably got used to cranking out papers in a single draft, maybe in two or less hours a pop. If you think that will suffice for college--WRONG!
- The best students in college, the ones getting A's and high B's, typically spend many hours drafting and redrafting their papers. The standards are infinitely higher in college.
- Write each paper in, at least, two stages giving yourself a few hours and preferably a whole day or two between drafts. You'll see your ideas and style more objectively.
- Ask your professor to give you some feedback on your draft. Ideally, your draft should be typed. You'll get better edits from the professor if it is.
When you are a senior, I promise, you won't remember what you did and in what you participated as a freshman, etc. You'll need this information for graduate school applications, campus recruiting interviews and all employment search activities.
College book stores quickly sell out of the book you need. Purchase used books for cost control, but make sure the previous owner didn't highlight clumps of the text. That becomes confusing and some students tend to rely on what their predecessor thought was important. You don't know what grade they made or which professor they had. You identify the important information.
Use and capitalize on their office hours early in the semester so you can establish a personal working relationship. It'll give you a major advantage.
- Discuss forthcoming paper topics.
- Bring in the opening draft of a paper you're writing and ask for an opinion.
- Discuss an intriguing issue that came up in class or lecture.
- Ask questions.
- Ask what "other" authorities or authors you might read on the subject.
- Discuss careers.
- Communicate with your professor by e-mail.
- It's helpful if you know your professor, but it's critical that your professor know you.
- Cuts the emotional distance between you.
- Reduces the intimidation factor.
- Gets you more involved in the course, so you're apt to do much better.
- Proves handy later on when you suddenly find yourself needing a recommendation--or perhaps a faculty ally to help you cut red tape. All students need one or the other.
- Knowledge is POWER and teachers just give it away.
Try to arrange your course schedule to include a couple of different courses of similarity. For example, if you take a course in British Literature and a course in British History then you'll not only find some commonality and crossover, but you can ask questions and discuss information in one course from the other. That will wow your classmates and impress your professor. Pair things like biology and anthropology, management and psychology, French language and European history, etc. Look for common threads, it will also lighten your load a tinge, and give you depth for essay test questions.
-au contraire-lest you don't mind all your important paperwork being relegated to the bottom of every stack.
You'll learn four times more information if you study specific material an hour a week for seven weeks, than an hour a day for seven days. An eight year University Study found that we remember information longer and more thoroughly if we absorb it gradually rather than all at once. This is true for physical skills, too. You'll be a better golfer or free throw shooter practicing an hour a week for seven weeks than an hour a day for seven days.
Use it to party, study, or chill here's how: Don't wait for ideal conditions to write, study, or work. Ideal seldom happens, you'll be waiting forever. If you are a normal functioning person, you probably waste five or ten minutes an hour. That's one or two hours every day. The workday (school day) is eight to twelve hours long. This means normal people waste one day a week. People aren't aware of this because it doesn't fizzle away in one big chunk. Rather, it's the total of lots of short moments throughout the day like waiting for a bus, waiting for a professor to arrive, standing in line for a movie, lunch, etc. You can pick up an extra day a week, and spend it any way you want, by using these "wasted five to ten minute blocks" to
- Chip away at lengthy reading assignments.
- Update your planning calendar.
- Jot down thoughts for a writing assignment.
- Update or review your class notes.
- Work on your vocabulary.
- Prepare flash cards.
- Write a summary of the lecture you just heard.
Make sure you're always carrying a pen and something you can work on during such moments.
We're not saying that you should become obsessed with getting something done by utilizing each and every spare moment in your day. You must SPEND time to relax, daydream, nap, or whatever; but, do be aware of how much time you now fritter away unintentionally. You'll be surprised how valuable this reclaimed time will prove to be.
I acknowledge and thank my friends, the students, deans, and professors, who reviewed, edited, and made suggestions for many of the preceding tips. They are the finest and you are the beneficiaries of their combined 100's of years experience.
They represent Dartmouth, New York University, University of Colorado at Boulder, Pepperdine, Tulane University, Del Mar College, University of Houston, Stephen F. Austin, Dickinson College, University of Pennsylvania, Texas A & M University, Texas Tech and the University of Texas.
The students want you to know that these tips are not in priority order. Each is seriously meaningful and purposeful.
