College

My middle-younger brother is headed off for a tbd college this fall.  All the excitement of choosing a college has me thinking back...and my goodness, it's been almost seven years since I was an idealistic freshman.

Anyway, college is a highly artificial environment.  At no other time in your life are you surrounded by exactly your peer group, give or take four years.  This can be extremely fun.  It can also be a petri dish breeding foolishness faster than Lake Bob breeds mutants.

So if I were a freshman heading to college for the first time, this is what I'd want me to know:

1)  Learn how to speed read.  Seriously helpful.  You can try programs like EyeQ, but for a quick and easy way to practice, just use your hand to follow along the text.  Your eyes naturally regress every few lines, and using your hand is a way to keep your eyes moving forward.

2)  Learn how to read slowly.  Learn to make notes and draw conclusions and summarize.

Kekoa says: "You can never have too many books!"

3)  Learn how to choose an appropriate speed for each book.  You will be assigned fifty bazillion books to read in college.  You will probably read them all in your first semester, or at least until midterms hit.  Thereafter, you will diligently resolve to do all your reading each semester and keep it up for approximately two weeks.

Some books deserve a full reading, but not all of them do.  So don't waste time plodding through the unimportant stuff.  Read the first five chapters of Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book this summer.  Skip the rest, please, unless you want reading to be sucked dry of all interest and relaxation.   If you can figure out a) which books to fully digest, b) which books to cruise, and c) which books to speed read, then you'll be fine.


4)   Be intentional about your friendships.  If you go to a small college made of mostly like-minded people as I did, it's easy to assume that everyone has the makings of a good friend.  NOT TRUE.  College friends have the potential to be lifelong friends who will encourage you and help you grow.  But they also have a great potential to be people with whom you waste time.  That's fine.  You can't be lifelong friends with everyone.  But make a concerted effort to spend time - and especially be roommates - with people who will stretch and encourage you.

5)  Save some core classes for your upperclassmen years.  This has several benefits:

• You'll be taking classes with lowerclassmen that you wouldn't otherwise get to spend time with.
• As an upperclassman, you'll know which professors and which sections are the best. 
• As an upperclassman, you may get priority at registration, so it may be easier to get in with the high-demand professors.
• Core classes are often easier - you've gotten practice writing 20 page papers, and all they want is 5?  Easy breezy.
• Even if they're not easier, core classes are a welcome topic break.  If you are a liberal arts major, your major classes probably involve a ton of writing.  Science majors have very time-consuming labs. Taking a core class is a way of alleviating the challenging monotony.

6)  Be a pal: when the professor says, "Okay, class is over unless anyone has any questions," don't be that person who asks a question.  Ask the professor after class, if you must.  Now you're welcome for helping you make friends.

[also, a bonus friend-making tip: do your laundry.  Common sense, you say?  You'd be surprised.]

7)  Stay away from student politics.  Caveat: if you attend a large university where student politics look impressive on a resume and actually do some good.  Otherwise, it's just drama.

8)  Don't feel like your life has to be the "hardest" to get support.  Please don't play the "I'm tireder than you" game.  If someone's complaining about how tired they are, consider this: even if their actual workload is lighter than yours, they might be sinking under emotional stress.  Be gentle.  

You don't have to be taking 23 credits and sleeping three hours a night to be able to say, "Hey you know, I'm really struggling - could you just take a walk with me?"

Also, bonus benefit: when you are a young parent with a baby, you won't blush every time you remember saying "I'm soooo tired" in college because you stayed up playing Bubble Spinner.

9)  Be prepared for syllabus shock.  It's going to happen every semester.  You will get all your syllabi within two days.  You will start charting due dates.  You will panic.  You will think, "I'm not ever going to sleep or do anything fun!"  You will cry (at least on the inside).  And then two weeks in, you will discover that you have plenty of free time.

Here's what I learned in college: there is plenty of time.  There is somehow always time for a student who pays attention and doesn't wait until the night before.  You'll be fine.  

10)  Figure out your learning style, and work with it.  Start with the basics: if you're a visual learner, then don't commit to a dozen study groups.  They're going to be full of audio learners who have to talk everything out, and kinesthetics who illustrate their terms on the whiteboards.  That's great for them, but a waste of time for you.  

But it goes beyond that.  Figure out now how you best learn:

Alone in your room?  In the middle of a crowded place?  With a small group of friends? 

In the early morning?  In the afternoon?  In the evenings? 

Are you an intake learner?  This person learns best if they have something to eat or drink while they work - even just water.  That's why you'll find me with a water bottle wherever I go, whereas Josh can't even concentrate on a movie and eat popcorn at the same time. 

Most importantly with this: don't assume what works for your roommate will work for you.

11)  Know your Myers-Briggs personality.  Okay, so this isn't just for college.  I'm an MB enthusiast.  Knowing your personality type and understanding certain things about yourself may help in relations with professors, roommates, and classmates.  Don't know yours?  Take the test.  (and I'd love to know yours, so you should let me know what you get!  I'm borderline between INTJ/INFJ) 

12)  Don't take too much of a good thing.  Extra-curricula things are good.  But too many are bad.  Try picking one to serve others, one to practice a new skill, and one to have fun.  Say no to the rest, and don't accept guilting.

You are not a better person for being busy.

Kekoa says: "Get less than 16 hours of sleep? Ridiculous!"

12)  ALL-NIGHTERS ARE NOT NECESSARY.  Repeat that to yourself.  Do not be fooled.  A neighbor who pulls three all-nighters in a row is not working harder than you.  He is managing his time poorly.  He is not being super-productive - he probably could have accomplished the same work in half the time.  If you find yourself consistently staying up into the wee hours of the night to meet deadlines, then you need to rethink how you're spending your daylight hours.

I'm sure I'll think of other things, but what did I miss?  What helped you the most in college?