(Originally posted: 12/22/2012)
It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to post anything here, and that’s because I was wrapped up in finishing the fall semester. As always, I taught a couple sections of First Year Seminar this semester. It’s a course designed to introduce new college students to the kinds of reading, thinking, and writing expected of them in college. My experience in this course over the last several years is that students are woefully unprepared, not for the reading/thinking/writing necessarily (though some students certainly need better high school preparation in those skills!), but for the practical strategies of life on a college campus. Click through to the full story for a few of the most important pieces of advice I have for new freshmen!
1. Buy a stapler, ASAP! It’s absolutely mind boggling how many students arrive at class with wonderfully written papers, but without a staple. Report covers, binders, paper clips, even fancy ways of folding the corners–but no staple. Staplers are sold at Walmart for 97 cents. Buy one along with a box of 5000 staples–that should last you through college and well beyond, and you’ll never lose a point for such a silly reason again. No professor wants a loose stack of papers from you.
2. Learn to use your word processor! It’s, again, astounding that students of the current generation have grown up all-but surgically grafted to keyboards, but so few of them know how to beat Microsoft Word into submission. It’s true that a lot of MS Word’s default settings are incorrect for standard university formatting, and that may not be immediately obvious, but there’s no excuse for not knowing how to use the Header function. (Every year, I’ll have at least one student who just tabs over and types his or her name on the right side of the first line of every page–then he or she goes back and adds something earlier, changing the pagination and moving their name down to the third or fourth lines. That not only is wrong, it’s just lazy!)
3. Along the same lines: Learn the standard formatting rules. No prof is ever going to reject you paper because it is printed single-sided, has 1″ margins on all sides, is double-spaced consistently throughout, and in a 12pt Times New Roman font. Profs may very well just turn papers back to you if they don’t have those traits! It’s very easy to set these features in the default template on your word processor and never have to think about them again. (Heck, I even provide my students with such a template!)
4. Don’t take an 8AM class. Ever. Better to delay graduation than to take an early class. This much is hormonal. During the ages when people are in college, their sleep cycles shift. No matter how hard you work or how early you set the alarm, you simply will not be alert and at your best at 8AM. So don’t even try. Make your earliest class 10AM or so, and you’ll see automatic increases in your performance, grasp of the material, and overall grades. Yes, you may have to wait a semester to fit a given class into your schedule, but it’ll be worth it.
5. Don’t be afraid to drop! Every year, I find at least one incoming freshman who is just flat-out overwhelmed by my class. It’s not that the class is particularly difficult (the average letter grade is usually a B), but just that everything else about adjusting to college makes it impossible for that student to keep up with my class, too. Almost as often, unfortunately, that student stubbornly refuses to withdraw from the class. “I’ll just keep working, and pull through somehow,” seems to be the philosophy. Then, at the end of the semester, there’s a D or F on their transcript that permanently skews their GPA. I’ve literally never met a college graduate who didn’t have at least one W on their transcript–but it usually takes people more than their first semester to figure out how strategic such withdrawals can be.
6. Just read the syllabus and do the work! Please! I’ve never made any secret of the fact that, if you just do what you’re supposed to do in my class–without even trying to do it particularly well–you’ll almost certainly get at least a C. Doing the readings, showing up to class on time, taking notes, having the assignments to turn in on time–for most people, that’s enough to ensure a successful semester. But some people sign up for college (which is, after all, voluntary) and pay tuition (which is extraordinarily expensive), but never come to class, never do the readings, and don’t bother to prepare assignments. Then they wonder why they’ve got an F at the end of the semester. If these folks spent half the energy on studying that they do on finding ways to procrastinate, their GPAs would be much higher! And if you don’t like the class and don’t want to be in it…refer to point 4 above!
There you have it. Six points, a few specific, a few more general, and all good advice.