From Senior to Freshman
When people were in high school, how many times did they get to go home after a test or a quiz? How many of the classes that they took were on times that they themselves had selected? And how far would they have gotten if they had tried to walk out of a class before it ended? Back then, one would have had to wait until everyone finished with their test, even the kid that took forever to finish, and without any choice, one would get the hardest classes all in one day! And not to mention the amount of days of detention a person would have gotten if one attempted to leave class early. These and many more are some of the differences that a student out of high school will face when they go to college for the first time. One might think that a college experience means that you will have more fun and freedoms, and get to easily cruise through college like one did in high school, but you must realize that in order to be successful in college, one must follow a formula for success that includes having a college mindset, dedicating time outside of school to study, and having good time management among others in order to successfully complete what will be a challenging but great experience in one’s life. The first thing that one should know is that now one’s a college student, not a high school student and one should have a college mindset. Things are now very different. There are more freedoms that one didn’t have before, but these come with responsibility as well. For example one will not get an after school detention for arriving late to class, nor will an instructor call one’s parents if you miss a class. Also, one also has to be responsible for arriving to class on time, and more importantly attending class, since an instructor will not wait for anyone, and it’ll be the student’s fault –and no one else’s – if they don’t get the class material. Otherwise, one will end up like my friend Winston who registered on the day the class started and decided not to attend the first class, and would miss many more class throughout the semester. When the midterms arrived, he was unprepared for them and had to withdraw from the class in order to save his GPA. The responsibility that comes with attending college is unlike anything faced before, so one must always act like responsible adults, and make decisions accordingly. Although Winston’s experience reflects what will happen to someone if they continually miss class, one must also make time outside of class for studying and homework. When I was in my 121 US history class, my professor said “for every hour of class, you should spend three hours outside of class studying.” Although spending that much time on a class is surely exaggeration (one would have to study nine hours for a three credit class!), one should spend time outside of class to study class material, and to go over anything that was not understood from the previous lectures. Many times is very important that the notes or chapters that the instructor went over in class be reviewed after or before, since that will further add to one’s understanding of the material and that way one can ask questions next class. Furthermore, reviewing the material after every class will help to already be knowledgeable in the material and not have to study ten classes worth of material the day before the test like I had to do in my microeconomics class, which also brings me to my last and most important factor of the success formula: DO NOT procrastinate.