Congratulations on starting your first college semester…I’m gonna offer a bit of friendly advice, most of which you’ve probably heard, but maybe not. Hope I’m somewhat original.
First and foremost, just to reiterate:
GO TO CLASS. I forgot this minor point when I was a freshman/sophomore. Actually, I had depression problems, but no matter. I shoulda gotten help sooner. Point is, I’m paying for it now. It won’t be horrible to get my BA at 23, almost 24, but I coulda avoided it by attending class.
Now that we have that taken care of, we get to the other stuff. Although you don’t seem like an asshole/idiot, I’ll include the following…
Pay attention in class. No falling asleep or b.s.ing/flirting. Your prof will notice and get annoyed accordingly.
Don’t slip out early too often. This happened in a few of my classes and the results were not nice for the slippers.
3)If the prof says participation counts, try to participate. Some profs are more serious about it than others, but if it’s a class where a lot of discussions go on, get a bit involved.
You said you commute, right? If your school is anything like mine, get there early and maybe you’ll avoid having to take a spot in East Bumblefuck…Probably not, but maybe. Also, I’ve found that commuters tend not to get involved in the campus social life unless it’s generally a commuter population, and I think they might be missing out. I’d advise you to take a look around and see if there are any clubs, etc. that you might want to examine.
Allright, that’s it from me. I hope I wasn’t totally boring in my delivery or asinine in my advice Good luck.
English 325 was today. We spent most of class talking about what exactly makes something a poem. Ugh. People were arguing for what we later found out to be a grocery list and a note from someone’s principal.
But what’s even worse is that my teacher cannot spell intention. Cannot. “Intension”. I wanted to walk up and put a space in between the N and T so it would at least make sense somehow (even if not the sense it was supposed to make). But the students in class think I’m funny and a few of them are attractive, so it’s not so terrible. And it’s a six-credit class I can ace, and my gpa could use the points.
I am a teacher. I am also dyslexic (sp?) Usually (99% of the time) I catch it as I write it… but…
I try to spell correctly in class, but invariably I make mistakes… Sorry! That’s the way life is…
My first semester I tried to tell my students that I was dyslexic, and if I spelled something wrong on the whiteboard to TELL ME! (to avoid confusion… I did NOT want anyone confused because their teacher had spelled “friend” as “freind”…). A few weeks later, a student raised her hand, and asked, “What is KO?” “Huh?” I said. “KO… what is KO?”
I looked at the whiteboard and saw that I had written ‘KO’ where I MEANT to write ‘OK’!
“I am dyslexic… sorry!”
I got blank looks. I tried to explain dyslexia to them… blank looks.
In desperation, I asked if anyone had a dictionary (English to Korean)… someone gave me one… I looked up ‘dyslexia’ intending to read the Korean definition to the class.
Fortunately, I read the definition first:
Dyslexia [sup]in Korean[/sup] referring to someone who cannot read or write.
NO! WRONG! ENTIRELY WRONG! I READ JUST FINE, DAMMIT! I AM NOT ILLITERATE!!!
Maybe you can tell that this pissed me off…
I am dyslexic (a bit… not badly!), not stupid! It took me a LONG time to explain dyslexia to my Korea students… and even now, I am not sure that they don’t think I am brain-damaged…
Also, I’ve found that commuters tend not to get involved in the campus social life unless it’s generally a commuter population, and I think they might be missing out. I’d advise you to take a look around and see if there are any clubs, etc. that you might want to examine.
Good luck.