First year of college

[hyelakingsfan]

Thanks for all the help guys. You're all great friends. But i might add one thing, ima still live in the same house as my parents the school is about 10-15 minutes away. So no laundry doing for me.

[ReiTheJelly]

have a 15min break while in a 3 hr lecture.

Waaaa! What college did *you* attend!? None of my lectures had breaks, except for my 4 hour lecture that gave us a 5 minute break after the first 3 hours...

[Cloud]

Carnegie Mellon.

[syan]

have a 15min break while in a 3 hr lecture.

Waaaa! What college did *you* attend!? None of my lectures had breaks, except for my 4 hour lecture that gave us a 5 minute break after the first 3 hours...

Man, that sucks! I <3 the breaks. Granted the only reason my prof gave one was so he could go get more Dr. Pepper. The man was addicted.

It might be an obvious piece of advice, but I rarely followed it (<--slacker in college): GO TO CLASS! It really does help. Also, no matter how much you may not have needed to study in high school, study study study in college. Your first semester's/year's GPA can make or break you later on.

Good luck, and remember to have fun too! College is definitely a great time.

[Masako]

Hey fellow freshie! I just started last week.
(My goodness, was it only a week ago?? )

Things I wish I'd known a week ago? Let's see... be friendly? I'm a very shy person and it's been kinda hard meeting new people. Especially since you're not dorming, and a lot of the planned activities are for the dorm kids. But if you have friends that are going there with ya, then it's all good.

Get an organizer/planner. You'll feel much more secure using one of those than a plain piece of paper.

Take note of random benches/study areas you could take advantage of during breaks between classes. Especially the shady ones. With tables. And minimal bird poop.

This is advice from a cousin, but... stay in the classes with the jocks sleeping in back. Supposedly, those are the easy ones.

Good luck!

[hyelakingsfan]

Well about 2 weeks have gone by since class started and i am finally settled in my classes. I have english, math, history, and theatre. Let me say this....english...sucks........math....sucks..........history.....sucks.......theatre....is alright lol (no hw....yet).
For math i get about 100 questions a day for hw. English is once a week but 3 hours. I have already wrote 3 essays and been to class only 2 times. Its insane. I just started taking history about a week ago and i have a test tomorrow. Theatre..i just have to read this monologue in front of the whole class. Before i was more afraid to go up and read in front of everyone but now im more calm and its great. Unfortunately i dropped art because the class was packed and it was "beginning drawing" and woah there were lots of materials to buy. Well thats about it. Its been alittle better lately because my cousin joined 2 of my classes and a friend in the other two. So its cool..kinda....... Well thats about it, if i left anything out then o well again thanks for everyones advice

[Hakiri]

Yay! I'm glad things are going alright for ya Harry, but the homework seems like a truckload! Lol i have no idea how I'd survive with that much later on... I guess I'll have to wait and see

But it's great you're settling in and that you have your friend and cousin with you to talk to.

I can be pretty shy, like Masako, so making friends is quite difficult for me (before I have people to talk to, I just keep drawing all the time lol) but if you already have a friend or a cousin in some classes, it's great!! ^_^ Whoo!

I hope college life rocks! And good luck for the future! Ya know I'll always be on MSN anyway asking you how your day went lol, but just in case I miss something, good luck and hope everything goes well.

[aernath]

Man, it's been far too many years!
I started out in Chemical Engineering, then after a couple years and one more try at getting through Engineering Physics, I switched to Chemistry. Then, after my third D in E.P., I switched to English with an eye on possibly teaching. For my teaching class, I got dropped into an advanced French class when I knew nothing of French. By now I'd been at college for three years. I finally looked at my current transcript and opted for the easiest option: German! But while I spent the next three years getting a four-year German degree, I also picked up FRENCH (), and Russian (to kill time).
(Oh, and a husband at the end there, thanks to the internet back when it was called "relay". )

The first year is pretty much a gimmie. You either adjust to the college life and get on with life, or you don't adjust, drop out, and get on with life. :

Don't let the poopers get ya down, and do yer own thang.
Oh yeah, and don't forget that studying thing.
And take good notes!

[blueheaven]

Droz: Want some advice?
Tom: Well, yeah.
Droz: Well, here's all you need to know. Classes: nothing before eleven. Beer: it's your best friend, you drink a lot of it. Women? You're a freshman, so it's pretty much out of the question. Will we have a car?
Tom: Uh, no.
Droz: Someone on your floor will. Find them and make friends with them on the first day.

Best advice EVER!

Seriously, though, college rocks. My best advice:

1. Don't overload yourself. Many freshman get in way over their heads early on.

2. Lighten up a bit. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Find a balance between work and play.

3. Ask questions and speak up in class. You are paying for these classes, get the most out of them!

4. Take an Anthropology course or two. Those professors are always the coolest.

Best of luck!

[celgami]

Try to sit next to a pretty girl in class. That way, when the lecture gets boring, you can always stare at her. Take an extra pen/pencil and paper in case she needs to borrow it. Set up a "study" date to "review material." Throw a raging party when your parents are out of town to make new friends!:D

Hang in there! It takes a little while to adjust but it's worth it.
Do try to meet a lot of people. As they say, "It's not always what you know, but who you know." You never know when networking may come in handy.
One of the best things about college for me was getting away from home and learning to be more independent.
Good Luck!

[Baakay]

Hey Harry!! So happy to see your post. What a bummer that you dropped art, though... you have wonderful talent and need to nurture it.

Those fabulous liberal arts/general ed classes that most places require during the first two years are dull and repetititve, but you will appreciate them down the line. Promise.

Remember this: some of your Beta friends were *cough cough* English majors. Poofreading is a specialty. Should you ever need it, don't you know.


I'm also about 3 weeks in -- or maybe it's 4 -- and have survived my first exam. (I hope.) This is the most massive amount of work for one class that I've ever encountered, and I thought last spring's qualitative research class was bad. Nope.. Advanced Research Methods. Not only is it the kind of material that makes my eyes close (sampling... anova... degrees of freedom... describe how badly this paper sucks and why) but it's something that I will NEVER use. When I do a research study it will either be qualitative or I will pay a poor starving grad student to run the stats for me.

My dad asked me "how OLD are you? and you're still in school? Haven't you learned anything by now??" (and now you know where I come by my whacked sense of humor...)

Oh... and answers to above questions: old enough to know better, yes, and apparently not.

[In_Gabriel_We_Trust]

Time for a variation on the Spider-man lesson :

"With great freedom comes great responsability."

When I attended college, most of the students didn't fail because it was too hard, but simply because they couldn't control the freedom College gives its students.

[Cloud]

As Einstein said, "Time is Money. "

[HotIce]

i went to a really small (700-900 fulltime ONCAMPUS students)... and my frist year, and most of the rest... seemed like High School. I had assigned seats, and no food/drink rules (in some cases HS was more easy). Most clases were about 50mins-60mins long, then onto the next class/room or whatever. It felt more like HighSchool away from home. Most teachers didn't care if you skipped classes but some did. Even after my first year there was still som assigned seating going on and such.

Since you'll be at home, ya won't have the bothers of dormlife, but ya won't have the fun either...

Best of luck to you at school! =D

[soda]

Thanks for all the help guys. You're all great friends. But i might add one thing, ima still live in the same house as my parents the school is about 10-15 minutes away. So no laundry doing for me.

The #1 thing you need to do is move out. Much of what you learn in college is NOT from the classroom. Your degree is simply a certificate of trainability that tells the employer that you can handle the technical aspects of the job but the stuff you learn outside the classroom will put you ahead of the other applicants and more importantly help you in all aspects of your life. This is the stuff you can't learn living at home having your parents cook and clean for you. I realize that there might be a $$$ issue but move out as soon as you can. You'll develop better juggling skills and you'll have more fun. You can't make many friends or memories if you live at home with parents that try as they might not to care when you get home, will still care when you get home. You won't be able to fully realize the meaning of the phrase "work hard and play hard" until you do. And if you ask any of us what we remember the most, we'll answer the "play hard" part of that phrase.