Something minor, but still pretty important:
Profs really like it when you cite actual books and magazines during essays. We live in a time when you can write your dissertation off of information found online, but if your professor looks down and sees that you actually cracked a book for the paper, you’ll rack up some serious points.
I second the thing about having all your classes on the same day. All of mine are on MWF, and those days off every other day are proving invaluable.
Some other thoughts:
Quarters (for the laundromat) are essential; hoarde them!
People in college dress much more casually then in high school, so feel free to break out your favorite t-shirts and sandals; if you worry about tucking in your shirt, you’re trying too hard.
Although you now have complete freedom over your eating habits, good nutrition remains as important as ever. Don’t try and live on pizza alone, and your body will thank you for it.
The snobby cliques in high school are so passe; there are tons of people who want to meet you, so smile and talk to everyone (especially the really cute girl who’s looking at you right now!). If they cop an attitude, they are an outlier, and they are missing out.
Mom is right; your grades are important, both to maintain your scholarship and because you might end up going to grad school. The easiest way to do well is to read what is assigned and never skip class. You’ll be amazed at how much those basics pay dividends.
College is the best time of your life, so make a point to enjoy it, because it will give you lots of great memories that you’ll take with you forever.
Have fun!
You asked about “21st century” advice. Tell him to always log off his account when he’s not in front of the computer he’s using. Here are some things I know happened to freshman who didn’t:
[ul]
[li]A time delay added to login that was incremented on every login. Unnoticable at first, but after a week, a good 5 minutes for the computer to do anything after logging in.[/li][li]Modification of browser startup to go to a random porn site whenever started.[/li][li]Nasty grams sent from the student’s account to other students/professors.[/li][/ul]
Tell him not to download copyrighted material. If he does, do not leave bittorrents (or other P2P programs) running – the [RI|MP]AA love to nail college students.
Tell him not to plagarize. The tools for detecting cut & paste are pretty good (e.g., turnitin.com).
Tell him not to cite Wikipedia in any papers. Regardless of the quality of any given entry, it’s not really an acceptable citation.
Tell him that OIT (office of information tech) is often not his friend (much like the bookstore). Better to ask an upperclassman or TA for advice on how the computer systems work.
Those are just off the top of my head and I’m sure more can be added.
I’d say a 10-minute discussion of plagiarism could be valuable: What it is, how common it is, the various things students tell themsleves to justify it, what will happen to those who engage in this.
I’ve returned to school for another degree after over twenty years of being in the working world, and it was a little difficult for me to get used to how things had changed since I was last in school. So, I have to reiterate this point:
This is great advice. I am constantly surprised at how many of my younger classmates believe that “if it doesn’t exist online, it doesn’t exist, period.” Maybe it’s my age, but my first thought when I have to do research for a paper is the library. It contains all kinds of resources that are not online, and probably never will be, but all of which are academically acceptable for research purposes, unlike some online resources. My classmates stare at their computer screens for hours, searching fruitlessly for things that aren’t there; I head for the library and find hardcopies of what I need fairly quickly.
A computer is extremely useful in today’s academic environment, but it shouldn’t be the only tool or resource one ever uses. Because some useful resouces aren’t online, make sure that Ivyboy knows how to use all the tools and resources that are available to him.
Ooh, that reminds me of another one!
The lines at registration are also going to be long. And numerous. Lines to get your room key. Lines to get your ID. Lines to register. Do not bitch about this. It’s the way it is, and it’s a great way to meet people. Bring something to drink, wear shorts as I said already, and talk to people about something other than how aggravated you are.
I’ll echo what others have said about the syllabus. Read it. Keep it. Follow the damn thing and don’t try to negotiate major policy changes with the professor.
Do not plagiarize. Ever. By the same token, do not let friends "help" you by writing papers for you. They will plagiarize; I guarantee it.GPA is important if it’s all you have. What may be more important is the GPA of the classes that pertain to that job.
I also want to tell you to steal from the cafeteria. You’re not going to want to do some dishes, and you’re going to want to drink some chocolate milk back to the dorms from the cafeteria, so having a couple are inevitable.
Here’s my party advice. It lasted my time through college and it’ll take care of you in virtually any party situation: go to the party late, leave early. People will be social and jovial when you’re there, and you should hopefully be out before the cops get there or people start getting unruly. If you’re with a group of people, tell them that you have a time in mind that you want to get out, with or without them. Also, do the George Costanza Exit. If it’s plus or minus a half hour to your time of departure and you say something very funny or memorable, get out. You can only screw it up.
That rule is void if you’re trying to talk to that cute chick (or dude…you may want that, you may not…I don’t know, just covering my bases) sitting in the corner with a friend of hers and you want to get into her pants.
You’ll want to do some things to excess, but try and keep it in moderation. You don’t want to be a statistic. Have fun, learn, and don’t fuck up TOO badly.
Learn your way around the campus. Learn your way around the building. That includes fire exits, secret entrances, and shortcuts. Do this early as well.
I strongly second this. I work in the law library on campus, and the flexibility makes it the perfect college job. At the circulation desk, as long as I’m not helping a patron or shelving I can study, browse the internet, exc. Closing shifts are perfect for studying.
It is also great to have experience with the library catalog, rather than having trouble when you really need to find an obscure book.
The law students are also great for advice on undergrad professors, and the librarians for library science grad programs.
Reminded me of something:
Leave early, and walk a different way to class every week or so. You never know what might be going on that you’d otherwise miss. Bake sales, protests, impromptu wet t-shirt contests (not so often as one would hope, sadly), shortcuts, back entrances to buildings, buildings you didn’t even know existed (there’s an observatory on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington, but it’s kind of buried in the woods. It’s a pretty cool building though, and I just stumbled on it one day. There’s also a building built around a tree.)
Get out of the dorm room and just wander around for a while your first few weekends. If you have a car and can afford the gas, take off and drive a half-hour in each direction, get yourself lost and find your way back. You’ll turn into The Guy Who Knows Where Stuff Is, or even The Guy Who Knows of Things to Do. Which equals notoriety, if not popularity.
A second piece that follows from that one, get to know the services on campus. The library, as many have mentioned, is one. You’re paying for that. You’re also paying for a multitude of other things that many students don’t even know exist, let alone use. You’re paying for it, use it. There are usually multitudes of people sitting around just waiting to help you with homework and whatnot. If your University has a music school, I can almost guarantee you there are tons of free or cheap concerts going on every weekend if not every night. There are frequently health services that are free or discounted, and then there’s the mother of all college-student perks, the rec center. If you paid for a gym every month and didn’t go, that would be kind of dumb, right? Well, you’re paying for a gym every month (assuming, of course, that where you go has one). I just went to the rec center here on campus for the first time today (literally), and I’ll hopefully be graduating in six months or so. I wish I had started sooner. The only excuse for sitting alone in your dorm room is that you WANT to sit alone in your dorm room (I wish someone had told me that five years ago too).
Three things I wish I’d realized when I started college:
Quarters are like gold. Find an old plastic film container. Fill it with quarters. Keep it filled with quarters. Do not spend quarters on anything other than laundry, because the change machine will be busted that day you’re on your last items of clean clothing.
Make use of what’s available to you. Professors, the library, gym, counseling center, student discounts in town, student clubs, study groups, etc. It’s there, you’re paying for it, so make the best of it.
Parties and drinking are fun. They’re not requirements to have fun. They’re best in moderation. Hangovers are very not fun.
And a bonus item that a friend of mine almost learned the hard way:
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to have unprotected sex. There’s probably a student clinic on campus that will provide free condoms. If not there’s probably a Planned Parenthood or similar that will in town. If not, there’s probably a drug store or pharmacy or supermarket or WalMart or Target that sells condoms. At absolute best unprotected sex leads to serious anxiety. At worst, babies and diseases. None of those are things you want.
Do all students use quarters now? We had to use laundry cards, so the trick wasn’t to have a lot of quarters lying around, but rather to have a lot of five, ten or twenty dollar bills. Though I think in some dorms, they were still using quarters.
New fangled stuff…I got something in the mail recently from studentsuds.com. For a “nominal” fee they’ll do the student’s laundry for them.
I laughed and told my son if he wanted to pay $270 a semester for that, to go ahead. Otherwise, I think laundry time is a great time to study. Don’t most college laundry rooms have facilities for passing the time while they do their wash? Foosball tables, video games, Wi-Fi, maybe a coffee bar or a weight room?
If not, they should.
How about theft? Is that much of an issue? My kids are used to leaving their backpacks and laptops piled up with everyone else’s outside a school building…I’ve already warned my son he absolutely *cannot *do that at college. He does have a good backpack…thank you LL Bean!
It certainly is at our school. Anything not bolted down or security tagged (as library books are, for example) or left unattended somehow is considered by thieves to be fair game. Warning signs (paraphrased example: “You are in a high-theft area”) are posted in places where things are likely to be stolen if left unattended–for example, the library or student union food court, where you might leave your things while you go to get something to eat. When you return, your things might not be there.
What the thieves want, according to the “Campus Crime Beat” column in our student newspaper, are laptops, IPods, and cellphones. Textbooks don’t seem to be in great demand from thieves, though it is far easier to grab a knapsack containing everything than it is to open it to look for technology and leave it behind if it doesn’t. So if your stuff gets stolen, you’ll lose your technology and your expensive textbooks. You may eventually get the latter back, if you’ve got your name etc. in them and someone spots them in a trash bin later (or you may never see them again), but your technology will definitely be gone for good. Yes, even if there are no warning signs such as I described, tell your son to be careful everywhere!
It can be. I have a healthy dose of mistrust, but even I was lulled into a false sense of security. (At the gym, I had an expensive jacket and pair of jeans stolen one time. Grrr.) I don’t get the kids who leave laptops/books in the library for days on end (for one thing, it’s annoying for people who want to use them, and it’s pretty risky).
I totally agree. But if he’s smart he can make his own mistakes and learn from them. You don’t strike me as the molly-coddling type, I’m sure he’s quite streetwise already!
Yes, yes, and yes, especially if you do anything illegal. Or, do anything at all on an introverted campus like Georgia Tech. I’ve met quite a few cops for both reasons, but when it’s serious, Get The Fuck Out. As my friend liked to say, “I don’t care if I’m standing next to Jesus, if the cops come I’m running.”
To add to this, always lock your dorm room, especially if you live in Atlanta. Sure, I lived on the fourth floor of my dorm with anywhere from 2 to 4 locked doors between my room at the outside world. But that didn’t stop people in Atlanta from climbing up the side of the building, climbing through the lounge windows, and wondering around the halls snatching stuff while people were sleeping. This wasn’t a one time thing, if you left your door unlocked there was atleast a 25% chance of anything valuable in your room not being there in the morning. People would even leave their rooms for five minutes, talk to some kid up the hall, come back and not have their precious iPod anymore. We even had a few reports of fake cops strolling about.
I’m all for learning from one’s mistakes, but I’m not going to throw him into the deep end of the pool without teaching him how to swim.