It’s only been one month into college and all that can be said is that it’s already a thousand times better than my four years at high school. In high school, we all know that everyone “hates” the freshman (not really) but we get what that means. In college, no one gives a crap about how old you are. We’re all just trying to survive while drowning in a pool of debt. It definitely takes time to adjust, but once so, you’ll be living the best life. So far, here are the best tips that I’ve learned within the first month at Suffolk University.
Procrastination and Time Management. If any high school senior asked me for only one piece of advice I could give them before they went off to college, it would definitely be to work around their schedule. All our lives, we’ve been told by our teachers to not do some project, essay, packet, or whatever the night before it’s due. Of course, we’ve definitely done that at least once in our life, BS-ed our way through that assignment, and got a decent grade back. Even though in college, certain classes meet once or three times a week for an hour or two, fair warning: you will most likely cry. I haven’t left my schoolwork for last minute so far and it certainly makes my academic life a lot less stressful. Ever since the first day of classes, I have done some portions of my homework for every class everyday so it all comes to place the night before it’s due. In fact, the night before a bunch of assignments are due, I ask myself, “Imagine if this were high school-me where I have all this incomplete work piled up. what would I be doing right now? Feeling as if I were on my deathbed while stress eating and procrastinating even more by watching That ‘70s Show” So any incoming freshman, this is my number one advice: don’t save anything big the night before. Doing little portions of work everyday is going to help you so much, not only in that moment but in the long run too. Your time management will be very useful in your adult years.
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Getting Involved
In high school, I was barely involved in clubs, but just because you may not be involved in high school activities, doesn’t mean you can’t get involved in college! At orientation, getting involved was one of the many things that the leaders emphasized and when I went home and looked up the variety of clubs offered at Suffolk and chose the ones I wanted to sign up for. The best part about the clubs I chose to join is that they only meet for once and up to an hour per week so getting involved and managing my time to balance schoolwork and social life is easy! Getting involved also makes you feel like you belong at your school. If you go to college just to study, do your work, and get good grades for a job, that can get pretty boring, so joining a club that you’re actually interested in will make your college experience more fun!
Image from: http://www.bcgavel.com/2013/09/06/guide-to-the-student-involvement-fair/
Spread out your Schedule
My older sister told me from her experience, that she took four classes within a day just so she could have no classes the next day. She said it was the worst and felt so tired/emotionally-drained to go to her last class. I get it, we just want a day off from classes, but that’s the purpose of weekends! So you might as well just have your classes and meeting times spread out. When I was preregistering for my fall semester classes, I was trying to make sure I didn’t take more than two classes a day. In the meanwhile, I was using ratemyprofessor.com when picking my classes so I could get the good professors. Right now, I’m taking Calculus, Introduction to the Cell (biology) with a lab, a seminar, and Strategies of Success. I have biology, calculus, and seminar on Mondays and Wednesdays. Biology and calculus are only for 50 minutes long while seminar is 75 as well as having a 1-2 hour break in between all those classes. But, I am learning new material at a faster rate compared to high school because of these breaks
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Managing my homework, studying, and going to my club meetings are stress free all thanks to the way I work around my schedule (the key to being successful in college!). For example, my roommate and I are always down for an adventure, it’s the quality I was looking for the most in a roommate and because we live in Boston, there’s always something to do. Usually around 7 or 8, we usually ask each other to go do something together like running an errand. for example, recently we went to Target all the way in the Fenway area just to pick up TP for our suite. This was at night too. So to any incoming freshman: you can still have fun and manage school/clubs, you just have to work around your time. I like to take my sister’s advice that she reminds me: you have your whole life to party and have fun, but only about a week to do this assignment, just do the schoolwork first!