Tuesday, October 30, 2007

A Few Little Things...

Now that I’m a few months into college, there are a few things that I have just figured out that I wish I would’ve thought of earlier. Just a few helpful things that would’ve made the first few weeks of classes a little bit smoother. First of all, if you are taking classes in college that you took in some form in high school, bring your materials! I ended up bringing up high school study materials and notes just a week or two ago and I wish I would’ve done it earlier. High school teachers tend to put together nice concise study guides and easy lists with ways to study things that are way easier to understand than your college professor who may or may not speak your language. I would also strongly suggest saving all of the major papers that you write in high school. Chances are they had the opportunity to be proof read a few times by teachers and classmates in high school, and you don’t get that luxury very often with papers in college. Plus, if you took classes in high school that are somewhat relevant to your college courses, there’s a pretty good chance you could end up with a repeat topic for a major paper. One of my good friends recently got assigned a 7-9 page paper on stem cells but it was no problem because she already had 5 pages to work with that she had written in high school.

One last thing about college that I wish I would have realized that is completely irrelevant to academics: people don’t dress up for class! I bought a bunch of new clothes for college that are the cute everyday kind of clothes, but I wish I would’ve bought only sweats, t-shirts, and going out clothes. Maybe that’s obvious to some people, but I didn’t realize that the people in your classes aren’t necessarily the friends you hang out with. No one cares and you usually don’t have anyone to impress, so be smart – save money and go comfy.

3 comments:

voiceofreason said...

I completely agree with you about saving old papers from high school. I don't know how many times I have used the core idea of my term paper from high school, making necessary changes to fit the topic. It has to be somewhere in the teens. I know that the teachers probably wouldn't like it if they found out, but it just makes for a really good paper and more time to work on other homework, or maybe even have some free time.

NAME123 said...

I'm glad you mentioned using high school notes for references. I find my high school calculus notes extremely helpful nowdays. Since I'm not learning much (or at all) in lectures, I completely depend on my notes and book to pass the course. If some of the professors are better with their lectures, I don't think we would have this sort of problems.

Lindsey Deno said...

I am a townie, and thankfully I kept most of my notes. However I haven't referred to them too much, but they are much more helpful then the notes we take in lectures. They act sort of like one-on-one time that we are missing out on in most of our big lecture hall classes.

I noticed that people don't dress up for class either, except for me. I usually don't dress up, but I look decent most of the time. I have no idea why I even try. But it's the way I've always been. I love sweats, but for some reason I can't get myself to wear them out in public too much.