Freshman Year In College?

If your college has something like a Summer start for Freshmen, take advantage. You take a few classes and live on campus the summer before you start college (the one here was 6 weeks long, it was soooo helpful). You get used to the campus while it's less busy and you make friends.

Study hard, don't date right away (people who started dating right away lost the opportunity to make friends). Don't get sucked into the party life. Most who did have already dropped out. Find a part time job. Join in activities in which you are interested. Study hard, do your schoolwork!

I did well -- a 3.66, which went up to a 4.0 the following year. I took a couple of courses that were bad choices. I didn't like them, was bored by them, scrambled at the last minute to study for the finals, and just managed to earn Bs in them.

My best tip is NOT to study in the dorm. Too many distractions. Stake out a place in the main library (or whichever campus library best serves most of your needs) where it's well-lighted, relatively quiet, and not near any doors, so you're not distracted by a lot of coming and going and socializing. However, there should be other people who study there. I always found that being surrounded by other people who were studying encouraged me to do so. I liked feeling like I belonged to a community of scholars.

Establish a routine: from this hour to that hour, I'm going to be in the library every day and evening.

If you have to study late, so that the library isn't open, find a quiet place in your dorm, NOT in your room, to study. My dorm had study rooms and a small library, too.

Study like crazy!! If you are serious about your schooling you won't have time for partying every weekend! I also found it really helpful to make friends the first day. You will rely on each other for homework help or if you miss class. They go through things so fast sometimes. And never miss class unless you absolutely have to. Eat right too. I didn't and got really sick because of it

If you want to get good grades: study all the time. Socialize when you have the time. go to every class.

If you don't care about grades, then try and bang as many girls as possible as everyone wants to have sex that first year.

I did well enough to satisfy myself, although if I had it to do over again I'd try harder in 3 of my 5 classes.

1. Read the student handbook/catalog cover to cover before you get to campus. You're going to be signing something saying you will read it and abide by all the policies in it, and also it's the best guide you're going to find to how your school works from a student's perspective. Pay particular attention to anything that surprises you, because those are the rules you're most likely to break without realizing it.

1a. If you qualify to register with the disability access office, do so before you get to campus. Even if you don't expect to use accommodations. This way if you do need them, they can be implemented fast. Spend some time on the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights pages, looking at information about transitioning to college/university, because it's a whole different game than K12.

2. Making friends should start as soon as you get on campus, because that's when everyone else is looking for friends. Hang out in places where other freshmen hang out (including but not limited to common areas in dormitories), looking approachable and introducing yourself to people who look interesting. If you have doubts about how to do this, I recommend "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. (That book came off as dated and obvious when I first read it, but the advice worked when I tried it.)

3. Start by planning to spend 2 hours studying outside of class for every hour spent in class for most courses, and 3 hours for math and science classes. Write yourself a schedule that includes that much studying every week, trying to spread the work out so that you are spending some time on each class every day that you study. So MWF classes should have study time on TR (R is the common abbreviation for "Thursday") and vice versa. You can adapt that as you learn how much time you need, but keep in mind that just about everyone thinks they don't need to spend that much time studying, including the students who need much more.

3a. Here's my favorite quick look at how your approach to studying should change when you get to college: Doctor Pion's Grade 13 at Ishkabibble Community College (I'm sorry, this device won't cut and paste and apparently I'm doing something wrong when I copy the URL by hand). There are also links there to more information.

3b. Pro tip: always carry work you can dip into when you have a moment, like flash cards or short math problems. When you have an unexpected moment of downtime (like a slow line), pull that work out. Then ask yourself how and when you want to do fun things. If you're on a commuter campus, you might want to spend an hour between classes with friends and study at night, but if you're living in a dorm, you may want to use those breaks to study so you have extra time to socialize in the evenings and on the weekend.

4. Go over the syllabus for each class very carefully. It tells you what to do (BTW, any reading that is listed for a given class meeting or week is to be studied *before* class) and what the rules are. If you are thinking about doing something unexpected like missing a meeting of a class or not turning something in on time, recheck the relevant policies. Not every professor distinguishes excused and unexcused absences, for instance, not every medical "excuse" will actually get you excused from anything, and notifying your professor in advance does not mean you will be exempt from consequences.

4a. If you are allowed to miss n classes without penalty, for instance, be careful. If you miss n classes and then get sick, you'll need to go to class sick if you don't want to be penalized. If the lowest test grade is dropped and you skip a test early on, you won't get a makeup test later in the term, even if you have a really good reason to miss another one. Policies that allow you to miss a certain number of classes or drop the lowest 3 quiz scores are there to allow *you* to decide if something is a big enough deal to miss class or not prepare for a quiz, so the prof doesn't have to. But you have to keep in mind that once you run out of "Get out of jail free" cards, they're gone.

4b. Office hours are times that the professor waits in her office for students to come by to talk. If you are the first student to get there, she may look busy, but you can let her know you're there. If you can't attend any of a prof's posted office hours, you can ask to make an appointment. Suggest 3 blocks of time that work for you (like "Monday after 2, Tuesday between 10 and 1, or Wednesday after 3") and the professor can try to find something that works for her. If she can't, she'll give you some times to pick from.

4c. If you have a question, ask it. Do your best to be specific about what you do and don't know. If you say, "I understood the section on [concept 1] in the last chapter, but the stuff on [concept 2] in this chapter doesn't make sense, even though they are supposed to be related," you're giving your professor much more to work with than if you took this approach:

Student: I need help. I don't understand!

Professor: Okay, what don't you understand?

Student: Anything!

5. Remember that you need to take care of yourself in order to do your best. Make sure you're getting reasonably healthy food, enough sleep, time to spend socializing, regular exercise and so on. A lot of times you'll be better off academically by putting the books aside and getting 5 hours' sleep, then going back to it, than you would by working all night.

I hope that this advice is useful to you and that you have a wonderful first year at college. :) Good luck!!