This is a list of stuff that I have learned from my college experience, which consists (so far) of half a semester of Computer Science at Virginia Tech.
High school is like the Catholic church. There is a great deal of rules, legislation, and work going on behind the scenes. If you have a problem with your priest, you can appeal up on the hierachy. Once you go to Heaven (college), you meet God (your professors) and the angels (the TAs). They are accountable to no one for little things like grades, and are capricious and whimsical. OTOH, if you don’t act like a dumbass, you don’t get smited.
Just as the intelligence of a mob is inversley related to the number of members, so is the collective intelligence of a dorm hall determined. You will learn this after your third 4:00 AM fire alarm or so.
The number one high school survival tip (show up and do the work) applies in spades.
Those you set your meal plan and those who price the food have never met, apparently.
There are people like you in college. Yes, even you, the angsty teen in the back row constantly bemoaning that no one understands you.
There are people orders of magnatude smarter than you in college. The best and the brightest of high school have to work to succeed in college.
Start all assignments the day they are assigned. It puts them in the back of your mind, so that the neurological equivalent of spare CPU cycles will be used on them.
Ahh! Isee that you have transcended what I call “the awkward period between discovering one’s self to be remarkably intelligent and discovering that other people are, too.”. Good job!
When taking a writing class, do not even attempt to use your own style. Use what the prof. wants… Don’t fight it, just do the work pass the class and go back to using your own style.
I assign final papers on the first day of class and tell students: get started on these NOW and explain what you already so wisely know. Number of students that still wait until the week before to start, complain about how much other work they have to do and how the paper is interfering with their studying and wind up with a half-assed paper and a crappy grade: All of them.
This applies to all classes, not just writing ones. When the lady with the PhD tells you that she likes concise writing, set in scientific type format, write it that way. If her GTA also happens to be in your class, you can learn that she grades each paper in about two minutes, and those with the correct format do better (whether this is fair or not, it’s the way it is).
What I learned so far in graduate school:
the undergrad experience at a highly selective, small, private university in New England is much different from graduate school at a 26,000 student university in the south. Football is king. Do not expect access to the library on a football Saturday. It may be open, but you ain’t gonna park anywhere. Stay home and study there.
No one makes you do the reading on a regular basis. No, really. But it’s much easier to get it done for each class than to wait until the day before (or worse, the day of) the midterm to do it.
Being out of school seven years before going back is nothing. There are people in your class who have been out of school twice as long. Whining about how hard it is to start back again gains you no sympathy.
There are people who start graduate school right after their undergrad. You may think that everyone needs to spend time in the real world before starting grad school. You can even bring this up. You may never agree with each other, but it can be fun debating the issue.
This is true, and it’s not bad–it’s the correct way to do it. When you are writing a scientific paper the style of the journal (or prof) you are writing for must be followed. We all have personal writing styles–but sceintific papers are not the places to try and express those styles. (If it’s a popular science book or article, or a science essay, or something similar it’s okay to be “you”; if it’s for Nature or Journal of Geophysical Research or for a class that wants you to write as though you were writing for one of those journals, keep the “you” to a minimum.)
When taking a writing class, try to realize that the Ph.D. (or M.A.) in front of you is trying to help you develop “your” style into something elegant, or at least readable. He or she probably knows something about the subject, or at least knows how to help you avoid comma splices and dropped punctuation.
I got one to add that falls in line with what you guys are saying. The professor is always right so don’t even try to argue her. I don’t care if she tells you the world is flat and Hitler was right, don’t try to debate her in class. I don’t care if you’re the smartest man in the world and you’ve negotiated arms treaties with the soviets before, don’t argue with your political science prof. It wastes my time and the prof’s time, and the prof will always be right. You know why? Because she makes the grades and teaches the class. If you got some hard-on for proving your prof wrong, then do it after class.
It never failed when I was in college, I’d be coming off some bender I had the night before. Going to bed at 3am only to wake up at 755 for my 8am class, I’d sit in class using all my concentration to take notes, hoping that the class will be over soon so I can go back to sleep. The prof would be moving along nicely, telling us the stuff we needed to know to pass our test, when some idiot, armed with the knowledge he got from reading “People” magazine the night before while waiting for his frontal lobotomy, decides he has to prove he’s smart by attacking the prof. Of course the prof proves him wrong within two minutes, so he sits down. A minute later, he’ll raise his hands, once again and go after the prof. Two minutes soon turn into 30 minutes and class is over. A class wasted because some idiot decides he wants to be professor.
The only reason the prof is here is to shovel info for the test in your brain. That’s all. If you want elightenment then go join a tibeten monestary. You’re at college to get a job, not an education. Unless, of course, you were a philosophy major, then you got neither <rimshot>.
Get used to some idiot who doesn’t understand what he’s reading to ask a question that makes no sense and contradicts basic accepted facts (Like can you have a carbon molecule with 3 protons and no neutrons). The materal that was supposed to be covered during that lecture you still need to know.
What sort of information you get out of college differs based on the sort of institution you went to. Unlike Thomas Stearns up there my undergrad didn’t help me get a job at all. It went more for that enlightenment thing–and prepaired most of us for graduate school, which WILL prepair us for jobs
This actually happened. After about 15 seconds of attack, the professor interrupted with, “Son, I really don’t care about that,” and resumed the lesson.
I made friends and demonstrated intelligence by arguing with the teachers in high school. Here, I avoid making enemies and demonstrating stupidity by sitting down, shutting up, and asking questions after class.
“Just as the intelligence of a mob is inversley related to the number of members, so is the collective intelligence of a dorm hall determined. You will learn this after your third 4:00 AM fire alarm or so.”
Here at Florida State, I had 7 fire alarms in the first two weeks, not to mention several drunk guys trying to instigate fights or have sex with anything moving in my dorm.
Just wait until you have someone nearly burn down the place with their heinous cooking.
47.5% of all College Students take themselves and the importance of their education way too seriously. 47.5% of all College students fail to take themselves and their education seriously enough.
The former become drones and drudges, the latter must make up for lost time or be behind the 8-ball the rest of their lives.
The blessed 5% realize that College is partly because you are too young and stupid to hold a responsible, and partly because you are too old to have your Mom and Dad take care of you, and partly an intellectual vacation earned by the accident of having survived to adult while achieving passing grades in High School.
They realize that the chances of actually specifically learning what they will need in their careers is vanshingly small, so they have a good time while remembering they’re there to learn how to think.
Actually. I didn’t figure that out until after College.
Hmmm. What did I learn while in College?
Girls will break your heart, and if you’re lucky it will happen often.
Budweiser beer is consistently drinkable. Old Crustacean beer is not.
Do not piss off the heavyset black women who is the cook at your fraternity house, if you go to College in New Orleans. She might be a voodoo queen who will nail a chicken head and a foot to your door this putting the gris-gris on your penis.
Don’t eat something on a dare.
Policemen will not find you humorous.
If a professor or anyone in athority looks at your work and tells you you are clearly not cut out for _____., than that is what you will end up doing as a career for the rest of your life.
Corrollary of 6. If anybody in athority tells you you are gifted at _____. You have no chance of succeeding in that field.
If you can possibly get a job working as a bartender while in College, jump at it. At the very least you will have required a skill that will see you through the rest of your life.
No matter what happens or what you do, absolutely refuse to go in front of the student disciplinary committee, or a student hearing. You will get fucked. I repeat do not be a defendant in the kangaroo court. Work it out with the Dean of Students and remeber that you may be recorded.
If you are going to drink, use the opportunity of College to learn how to do so without getting wasted.
Don’t be afraid to be a fool. You are a fool, and you’re not fooling anybody by pretending not to be. The classic fool is the naive learner who makes mistakes on the road to enlightenment. The only way for you not to be foolish and make mistakes is if you don’t attempt anything.
I don’t wanna go through college just so I can get a crappy job when I get out, I wanna get a fucking education! That’ll be nearly 30 years of working my ass off just for an ass-kissing cubicle job I’ll end up hanging myself from a fan ten years later. I want some fucking enlightenment! Where can I go for THAT?!:mad:
Do not listen to any cynical thing you hear about university. Anything you do not believe about it will not be true for you. If you do not believe that it will involve a great deal of drunkenness, it won’t. This is true, to a limited extent, with professors - they seem in general to be exactly as Kafkaesque as you expected. Don’t worry about it.
Ask questions. Your prof is there, in part, to answer questions. If you think it’s a stupid question, wait until after class. If it’s about a difficult (to you, or to a lot of you) concept, do not be afraid to open your mouth; that’s why you have one:) Most professors with three brain cells (which, sadly, sometimes excludes the tenured ones) plans for people to ask questions during class (this would exclude the ones, for example, who have one overhead for each class and read from a big book of notes every class period, whose voice inflections do not change, etc). And after class, even.
Pantellerite, you are a blessed soul. If my profs gave me the paper assignments at the beginning of the semester, I would be so fucking set … I could just sit down one weekend and write every paper. That would save so much time.
A box of pop-tarts next to the radio will improve reception.
Your most important lessons are learned in the bars, and later, in the bedrooms.
Living alone is expensive and sometimes lonely, but it’s better than living with someone you can’t stand.
Your heart will be broken, and it will mend to be broken again.
