At least two 8 oz cups of water, vitamin water if you have it, and 2 Tylenol and then sleep as long as you can= no hangover. (it worked for me; YMMV). Also, not sure if you’re male or female, but NEVER leave your drink at a party unattended and don’t take a ride home from a stranger…
Also, open yourself up to new experiences–not drugs or sex necessarily (that’s up to you, but if you do it, do it safely), but I mean travel and meeting new people and trying new things. Join a club you think sounds interesting; go to foreign films offered on campus; go to art exhibits/concerts etc.
I ended up doing it twice, covering both extremes of slackerdom and academic overachiever. Both had their merits and their drawbacks.
First time, my freshman year was normal. Went to classes, partied occasionally, etc. I got very cocky as a sophomore, and was given the heave-ho on academic grounds. Straightened myself out, went to another school, and finally graduated as a mediocre student with obvious wasted potential. Still got a job in my field, though.
Fast forward about 15 years. House with mortgage, career, teenager, terminally ill mother, etc. and I decide I want to get a Master’s degree. I can’t because of those mediocre grades. I enrolled in an urban branch of the university that dismissed me, and got a second bachelor’s in a related field to the first, but actually in the area where I was working, in effect formalizing my career experience. This time, I took it very seriously and didn’t screw around. I don’t know if it was my on-the-job experience or the amount of studying I did, but it was much easier this time. I did badly in one class that was concurrent with my mother’s death, otherwise, I made excellent grades.
My advice: go somewhere between my extremes. Party, get laid, etc., as the others have said, but also take the classes seriously. Treat them as a full time job, as in 8 hours a day in class or studying in the library (or wherever you are comfortable). When the work day is done, have a life.
Don’t do what I did. Although the life experiences are something to behold, my track was also a monumental frittering away of free time and money.
Don’t skip classes without first making sure of the attendance policy. In the college where I work, you can be dropped after two unexcused absences (which is not the same as being allowed two absences, btw).
Get a job on campus. This will give you another perspective on college life. Nobody tells you this, but it happened for me and for my own workstudy students. You’ll learn a lot and maybe some nice middle-aged office lady will pamper you as well.
Just because you can drink all that beer, doesn’t mean you should.
Never drink the punch at a house party.
Buy a white noise machine (provided it doesn’t drive your roommate insane). It’s great for blocking out distractions when studying and trying to sleep.
Condoms and a second form of birth control, use it every time. Please. Your college career can come back after a semester abroad, or even taking time off to work. But the odds are very small you’ll graduate if you have a baby while still a student.
For me, 40 years ago
Do go to class. You might well get insight not in the book, and hearing it helps you learn a different way from reading it. Plus, if you have trouble, the prof is much more likely to give a break to someone who shows up. I had two friends who took an easy A class, but they never went, assuming that there was a paper to do, and that was it. Surprise, there were tests, and by the time they showed up to ask about the paper they had already failed. And I went to a place where you had to work at failing, since there was a late drop date.
Take at least some classes which are interesting, even if not required. All my graduate research came from a topic I learned about in a class my senior year.
Don’t be afraid to do something different and fun. My senior year I took a week off and drove from Boston to Florida to see the Apollo XVII launch. I’ve never regretted it.
My daughter is in her last year, and she has made more of college than I did. She got herself a job in Residence life, and got experience in running events for an entire, very large campus. When she applied as an RA the people there coached her for the interview. She also became captain of the equestrian team, and learned all about taxes, lawyers, contracts, and paperwork. Then she spent last year in Germany, traveled all over Europe, got a nice boyfriend and became fearless. She has an awesome resume and a great story for fellowship applications. She also has good grades, but this other stuff is going to do far more for her.
If you are more research oriented at all, find a professor you would like to work with and see if you could do grunt work in his/her lab. You might need to wait for a few years, but it makes for a great reference and you can find out how the grad world works.
Stay in school as long as you can afford it. Best time of your life and you won’t ever get a “re-do”.
Get involved in as much as you can stand, then join a couple other activities. Sleep when your dead.
DO NOT have a steady boy/girlfriend. Play the field. Now is the time.
Meet/befriend as many people as you can. Listen twice as much as you talk. That is why you have 2 ears and only one mouth.
Study hard, play hard. Don’t drink too much. Just enough.
This one I have come to embrace only recently: Don’t eat shit! You can eat decent, fresh food for about the same cost of crap. Learn to cook simple, fresh and healthy food out of a mini-fridge on a hot-plate or toaster oven.
It is vitally important you attend all your tutorials. Lecture notes are usually posted on the course website (often with audio, if you’re lucky) so it’s not the end of the world if you miss a lecture or two. But the actual learning happens in tutorials, and you need to be at those. All of them.
Everybody’s “University Experience” is different. Just because yours doesn’t involve drinking until you can’t feel feelings anymore and/or more T&A than a year’s worth of Big 'Uns magazines doesn’t mean you’re “missing out”.
Get enough sleep. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve stayed up till 3am working on a paper or an assignment before practically falling asleep at the keyboard, and then re-read my work the next day and wondering if I need to get someone from the British Museum to translate it back into English. If you’re tired, call it a night- you’ll be in better shape in the morning and you’ll get more work done, of higher quality.
It really doesn’t matter if you miss that “Awesome party”, especially not if you’ve got assignments due.
Drink quality booze. Assuming you’re of the legal age to purchase and consume alcohol wherever you are, of course. On that assumption, spend a little more and get the Good Stuff when you drink. If you have an all-nighter on Industrial Grade Scotch you will feel like shit the next day. If you have an all-nighter on Chivas or Dimple or Canadian Club, you’ll A) look like a classy person who knows their drink, B) drink less (because it’s so expensive), and C) not feel completely like shit the next day.
Make sure you have plenty of “unwinding” time. That means read a good book, watch TV, play video games, or just generally take it very easy- not studying, not partying, just kicking back and doing virtually nothing- maybe one night a week. It will do wonders for your sanity.
Don’t be afraid to ask your tutors for help. That’s what they’re there for.
Be mindful everyone else will be asking your tutors for help too, so don’t bombard them with e-mails asking why they haven’t responded to your query yet.
Ring or e-mail your parents regularly. Not necessarily every day, but let them know you’re OK, how everything is going, and keep them up to date with your studies and so forth.
Buy a good quality pen. Always have it, and a notepad, with you.
Back everything up, so you’ve got two electronic copies of everything. Keep one copy on a USB stick on your keyring, and another copy on your primary work computer. Make sure they’re updated regularly.
Reference or cite everything. Everything. You cannot have too many references or citations in your assignments. Seriously.
Finally, something I’ve found useful: When an assignment calls for a “Critical Analysis”, that doesn’t mean “Write your opinion in 2,000 words or less”. It means “Find a bunch of other published writers with an opinion on the topic, cite them, then state whether you agree or disagree with their opinion, and then pick the opinion you agree with most and state why you agree with it in relation to the topic.” You don’t get to have an original opinion of your own until you’re a Ph.D, apparently.
You know, that is the best homework explanation I’ve ever had. I mean, I figured it out, but it is nice to have someone else confirm it. Plus it does make things easier.
Exactly what I was going to say. Actually I was going to say “Don’t get fat” but same thing.
My college had a really crappy meal plan and I didn’t sign up for it. During orientation week I dined with my family in the ONE cafeteria on campus-- over a mile from my dorm – and the food was so awful my parents told me I never had to eat there again.
This meant that I was eating in a restaurant at least once a day. And the dearth of a good meal plan meant tha the college area was loaded with some actually good restaurants that fit a student budget.
And they all had a dessert menu. And restaurant sized portions.
After 18 years of eating what Mom served up whether I liked it or not suddenly I could have something I REALLY liked for dinner every night. Lasagna…cheesesteak sandwiches…8 oz burger with fries…burritos…followed by cheesecake…almost always cheesecake…with toppings.
Boy, did the pounds pack on.
Buy a scale and weigh yourself, if not daily at least twice a week. Nip any upward trends in the bud.
For some people, college will be awesome, but for others, it will suck. For most, it will likely be somewhere in between. That doesn’t mean that any of them are doing it “right” or “wrong”; it’s just how life goes. I saw lots of people get hung up on the idea that “This is *supposed *to be the best time of my life”, and so they made themselves miserable trying to cram in as much partying as possible while ignoring their studies, or they spread themselves impossibly thin trying to join every club, class, and traveling medicine show they could find.
**Moral: **don’t worry too much about what college is “supposed” to be, or that you’re not getting enough out of the experience. You should absolutely get a taste of as many new things as you can, but if you’re like most people, you will have far more interests than time to pursue them. There will be cool things you miss out on in order to do other things you want to - or have to - do. Them’s the breaks. It’s unavoidable, so don’t regret it; just make the most of those things you do have time for.
You may figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life, but you may not. I felt a ton of pressure to decide my major as soon as possible (and I went to a school that didn’t have minors, only double-majors), and it seemed like everyone else already knew what they wanted, and had been on their degree track since high school. So I ended up choosing something I felt I had some background in, rather than other subjects I might have enjoyed more, but which would have required me to start from scratch. I couldn’t do that, because I was terrified of not finishing in 4 years. (I ended up taking 6 anyway. I didn’t die.) I liked my major well enough, but I ended up going back to school ten years later and getting a second bachelor’s in one of those other subjects. I did indeed start from scratch, and still completed it in just over a year.
**Moral: **don’t worry too much about “the rest of your life”, and don’t feel you have to decide Right This Second. You’ll make much better choices if you focus on, say, just the next five years, bearing in mind that you can always go back and start over if you really want to, whether that means switching majors and taking an additional year or two to finish, or coming back to school after some time in the workforce.
Go find the department secretary. They know everything about what’s really going on. Make friends.
Get a filing cabinet, keep everything they give you. Bills, notices, class stuff, anything with a grade on it, everything. If you have to turn in a form and don’t get a copy, make one yourself.
Learn your professors. Each one is different, some are good, some are bad. Make friends with the good ones, avoid the bad ones. Find out what they want, then do it.
Take non-major classes when you can. Different is good: Tai-chi, human sexuality, history of roman warfare, whatever. Having an occasional class that you don’t have to stare whatever you stare at day in day out is a good thing. That said, don’t take classes that require too much work. The idea is here is to change things up a bit, not to drown you in irrelevance.
Go out and meet people. You will probably never again have this level of enforced human contact, take advantage of it.
I don’t think I had any out of class interaction with any of my profs (except for maybe the Integral Calculus prof I approached after I slept through the rest of the final after doing one problem [mono!]). As a result, I don’t think I got anywhere near as much out of college as I could have. Later, at 27, I married a college professor, and looking at the relationships over the years she had with her students and how that intensified their learning experiences–and their fun–made me kick myself for all the lost opportunities
Hotflungwok does have some of the best advice on a successful academic experience. I can not tell you the rewards of a good relationship with the departmental secretary and his/her seconds. They can pull your butt out of the fire better than anyone else on campus and if they like you, they will go out of their way to actively help you.
I was in engineering and that is a whole different animal. The things that I can share are:
Find a study group that has lasted for several years, they will have access to information as to which professors are the best to take (and these are not necessarily the easiest) and probably examples of old tests and quizzes. I, like hotflungwok, kept all of my notes, tests and homework for all of my classes (through my 4 degrees) and these were invaluable for students following me.
Never be afraid of asking questions. I love being asked questions, it shows that someone is not only paying attention, but wants clarification or more information. This is good positive feedback to the lecturer.
If you are in technology, be ready for lab TAs and professors to be non-native English speakers. They can’t help that they were born somewhere else. Work on understanding them (questions), language and culture. They are also highly stressed and will have variable moods - understand that it is nothing personal, they could have a paper deadline that they need to make by 5 pm and tomorrow (when the stress is off) they will be pleasant and personable.
Extra curricular groups. I must say that the best friends that I have are the ones that I made as an undergraduate. I still keep in contact with them and they have only become more interesting. Most of them are in technology as well, but as such, we are fellow travelers. As an undergraduate I had difficulty finding girls in my classes and I used student groups to meet girls. I found the biology and chemistry clubs rewarding, in terms of my social and intellectual interests.
Living on campus has definite perks, especially where time is concerned. For instance, you are close to your classes and don’t have to worry about parking. You also have cafeterias available, so you can eat a balanced meal that you do not have to shop for, cook, or clean up after. These are major pluses. Note on dining halls - my undergraduate school consistently is rated in the top 5 state schools for quality – I ate well.
Start your work early. Let me repeat, start your work early. WRT homework, having looked ahead preps you for the lecture (advice above). That paper you had assigned will have a test and 2 homework sets assigned the same day as it is due. In engineering, working ahead was the only way that I could have an evening off during the week to socialize.
IMHO Going to class is the biggest grade bang for the buck. You know the material, you know what is stressed, and you get the contact with the other students (study groups, etc).
This, like hotflungwok’s, is advice on how to be a successful student, but that isn’t all of college. Remember Chef’s advice “Chirren, there’s a time and a place for everything and that’s college.” You will make your mistakes and they can be some of the most important lessons that you will learn.
These are all great tips. When I was organized and getting to know my professors, I was doing a lot better and getting lots of advice (which I needed) for what to do after I graduated and how to make it happen. I also changed majors a few times, so by the time I got to my final major, I had taken a lot of classes that were outside of my major coursework.
#5 has to be the biggest thing I miss about my undergraduate years-- even though I went to a pretty big school, I met a lot of people, made a lot of friends, and Wednesdays on campus was like a big meet-and-greet in between classes. It was quite a lot of fun for me, and I miss the opportunity to meet so many new people in one place. Take advantage of it while you can.
I found that I changed a lot through my first year at university. That may be due to my being a year younger than most of my classmtes though; I was only 18 when I started university and probably had a bit of post-high-school development to finish.
Reading the thread… man. I really wish I was back there and could do things right. Social things that is, like actually asking that girl out.
Corollary A
Don’t miss out on a great thing because you’re too worried about playing the field. I met my wife in college and although I may have missed out on some wild times, the year we spent living together in my tiny little RA room was one of the best years of my life and one of my fondest memories of our relationship so far. (8 years later)
My sophomore year and senior year in college stand out for me.
My sophomore year I had no time for either my major (physics) or outside socialization. I took a year of abstract algebra, which I loved but which was really not relevant for my major, and a year of music theory, which was not at all relevant and which was the best class I took in college (with the highest workload). I seriously overloaded on music extracurriculars – I spent more time in orchestra and choir than I did in class! not to mention a lot of one-shot music activities I got involved with through people I met through either the class or orchestra, including a bunch of contemporary music stuff. It was extremely stressful, I had no time to catch my breath, I would never do it again, and it’s the best time I’ve ever had in a lot of ways.
My senior year I did no extracurriculars at all. I hung out with friends, a lot. I did things like sightsee, go to concerts, and go to the ballet which I had had no time to do before. It was very relaxing, and I loved it, and it’s the best time I’ve ever had in a lot of ways. And many of the friendships that solidified during that year, many with people I would never have met outside college, have lasted - well, more than ten years as of now. The friends I spent time with during college are the ones in my life I most treasure.
The moral, I think, is that there are many ways to get amazing things out of college, and just because you’re not currently in the process of getting one set of amazing things doesn’t mean that you’re not getting another set of amazing things.
Also, I was pretty miserable freshman year. I missed my high school friends, I hadn’t really connected with college friends (I had some, it just took me a while to find my niche), I hadn’t really figured out how to pace myself, so one semester I took too few classes and was bored, and the next I took too many and was frantic. I guess the moral here is that it can take a while to figure out exactly what’s right for you, and that’s okay too.
Use the library, and not just to get away from your fraternity brothers or dorm mates when you need a quiet place to study. Use it to research topics that interest you, or to find interesting books you can read about topic X, whether it’s related to your major or not. University libraries are the best there are, and some of them won’t even let you in the door once you have graduated and are no longer a bona fide member of the campus community.
In this vein, don’t do what I did and avoid all physical activity, just because no one’s making you take gym anymore. Use the rec center and swim or work out, or even just to shower and change after a run. While you are in the locker room changing, where there should be a scale, use that to check your weight regularly and save yourself the cost of buying your own.
Plus it does make things easier.