Surviving College 101

Advice from fresh meat herself

 Let me just begin by saying that this is a way for me to share some of my experiences and maybe help people who have no idea what's going on when we first get here. I STILL have no idea what's going on sometimes. Also, this 'survival guide' started out on a blog I created a few days ago.  http://lifeasacollegestudentt.blogspot.com/ I'll probably always update on their first, but it won't be long before I transfer each thing onto here.  Enjoy!  

        The last two years of high school are nothing but tests, applications, and ducking from the military recruiters that flag you down in the hallway trying to make you join. It's a big time for stress and, believe me, by the time you graduate you will seriously consider even going to college at all because you're so sick of hearing about it and 'prepping' for it.

        All the teachers tell you that you won't be babied or spoon fed in college, that you'll have to become responsible, that the exams will be impossible, that your professors will hate you, that if you continue your high school work ethic you'll eventually fail and drop out and live in your mom's basement with a mediocre job at McDonald's and then die alone while everyone hates you. Pretty dramatic, right? After all the hype, summer felt like serious down time of nothingness. (I'm going to get off topic for a second and just say that no, you will not magically stay on a decent sleeping schedule. Either you're a morning person or a night owl, and that will continue for the rest of your life. Or at least as far as I have experienced. The struggle is real.)

        When you apply for a college and get accepted, they will give you a username and password to have an account to manage your scholarships and things of that nature. This is very important. All of my previous teachers seemed to leave out how important this is. I am passing on this wisdom so that whoever is reading this will not have a heart attack like I did trying to find everything. I hardly thought twice about my User. You use this to register for classes and then you go to the book store (online), use the search bar to put in the class name and possibly teacher, and it will show you the books you need. Then you physically go to the book store and purchase them. Viola. I'm a hard-core stresser, so naturally I was freaking out because I had no idea how to find out what books I needed. Now you have obtained the knowledge that I did not possess.

         Another thing that teachers don't tell you, is that you will have to ask things yourself sometimes. Shocker. My first class ever was a math class. I signed up for it because it wasn't on the college campus, but on a high school campus closer than the college. I get there with my mom and we sit in the parking lot a while to scope things. We're both a little nervous. We sit there a while longer and then people start to go inside. We decide to go inside too, and all of the people we saw went into an English class. We look around for the math class and we can't find it. We looked for a sign or something, right? At least the English teacher had the decency to put a sign on the door saying 'English 101'. So we attempted to find a sign that would lead to the whereabouts of our math class. Nothing. So of course, the natural thing to do is to wander aimlessly around campus until something happens. Eventually we ended up asking someone and turns out the math class was UPSTAIRS. I would think Lesson One of college life would be never be afraid to ask questions. If you have a question about how to register, call and ask the college. If you can't find a class, chances are a teacher (or student if they have any idea themselves) will point you in the right direction. You are not alone! There's hundreds of other hopelessly lost young adults trying to find their way through the college experience as well.

        High school teachers tell you that you need to be responsible, but they say it so that students don't fully understand. It sounds like you'll have to be more responsible in doing your work on time. This is true. However, all of your teachers will give you a 'syllabus' at the beginning of class telling you exactly when things are due. So unless you completely ignore it, you'll know when things are supposed to happen.

         I think the REAL reason they tell you to 'be responsible' is for the part that doesn't have to do with the school work. It's waking up and actually getting to class, doing research and finding out where the class actually is on campus (there's usually several buildings that you'll stumble into before you find the right one if you just wing it), using your User to find out what books you need, and bringing them to class. The work is actually pretty easy. That is something high school teachers definitely do not tell you. I'm not sure if it's a conspiracy to make you dread college, but the work is not nearly as hard as they say. If you read the chapter, you'll usually be fine. You can't be lazy though and not read the chapter.

        In short, don't be afraid to ask questions, know what you're doing and where you're going, and the work isn't as hard as teachers say. It's like that assignment your teacher told you about at the beginning of the year that they saved for the end exam. You dreaded it all year, but once you got to it, it was nothing because of what you learned in the class up to that point. It's not as hard as you think once you get here.