Hey I start college this week any advice? Hope all is well you are amazing!
Omg good job!! That's so exciting!!!! Alrighty, I have a bachelor’s degree and now i'm working on my Rec Therapy Degree so I’ve had like 5 and a half years of college/university experience so hopefully at least something here will be helpful for you.
What are you going to collage to take?
One- Try to sit in the front of of the lecture hall
Classes will probably be a lot bigger than you’re used to and many people find this intimidating. I used to sit at the very back of lecture halls because I hated having to walk past rows of people, but you know what? My grades suffered for it. I’m an easily distracted human being with crippling ADHD and so being able to see everybody's computer screen was a nightmare for me. Half the class was watching movies or playing games or whatever so I didn't hear a damn word my teacher said. The closer I was to the front, the less distracting it was for me. Plus, I find that when I’m more familiar with being closer to my teachers it's easier and less intimidating for me to ask them for help or to re-explain things.
Two- Don’t be embarrassed, everybodys a mess and other people have your question.
The colleges I’ve been to have been nothing like highschool. We’re all in this together, we’re a suffering squad okay. So if you're too tired to ‘look good’ SICK half your class probably has not showered in like five days. Have a question that you think might make sound dumb? I can literally assure you that other people have the same question and pray somebody else will ask it. All of you are confused, it's okay.
Three - BUY YOUR TEXTBOOKS USED!!!!!
Oh my god I cannot stress this enough. For some reason professores and schools are out here hustling textbooks like starving soundcloud rappers. We don’t need that shit. Your school probably has a facebook group or two where students are selling their old textbooks much cheaper than you could get them in bookstores. And when I mean cheaper, I mean by like 100 - 200 dollars. If you're on a physical campus, lots of people put lists of what books they're selling on their lockers so keep an eye out for flyers as well.
One of the things I really love about college is all the low pressure social situations. There's literally tons of clubs at most universities rankings from really open (First Year Social Club!!) to ridiuclously niche (We All Play Super Smash Brothers In Full Costume Once A Month) so its a great place to start when it comes to making new friends and finding some cool stuff to do!
Five - Don’t fall for the ‘too cool’ trap.
Lots of people have endless fun in college (like me) and some people really, really hate it. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with your attitude about being there. There's tons of pep rallies, carnivals, festivals and whatever else held by your school that can actually be super fun to attend but many people think they're ‘too cool’ for things like that. Don’t fall into this trap, I can assure you those that went to the events had like 9 billion times more fun.
Six - ASK FOR THE HELP THAT YOU NEED
This lesson took me so long to learn, but it was life changing once I did learn it. There's tons of resources available to you though most universities, and most of it was probably paid for through your tuition so it makes no sense to NOT access these things. See what your school offers for counseling services, stress reduction, learning activities held in the library, financial aid, make use of your teachers office hours, things like that. Crawl through your school’s website and see what they have to offer you, you can get some really really good life advice sometimes. If you’re falling behind in school work and need an extension, ask for it. Literally the worst thing that can happen is your teacher telling you ‘no.’ Which, honestly, in my near six years of schooling has literally only happened once and it was because the teacher personally didn’t like me.
School Burnout Is REAL, she is sneaky, and she will hit you when you least expect it. I really struggle with having too high of expectations of myself when it comes to my work/life balance. This is the only year that I haven't worked at least 20 hours a week on top of full time university education and that only because of COVID and my immune issues, however for some reason I always expect myself to do like 3 - 4 hours of homework a day. Which is lunacy. At least it is for me. I literally cannot even count how many times I’ve put my grades before my physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental wellbeing. How many times I’ve forced myself to keep studying when I knew that I had already surpassed my limit hours ago because I thought that getting an A was more important than anything else. Especially myself. That’s not true.
You weren’t put on this earth to get straight A’s, you were put on this earth to be the best you that you can be.
So sometimes, you really do just gotta accept that ‘C’s get Degrees’ and you gotta close your textbook, go paint your nails, call your friend, and go to bed.
Eight -- Everything Can Be A Learning Experience
There are endless things to learn at college, and most of them aren't what the teachers are telling you. College is where I first learned that it really isn’t the end of the world to fail sometimes. It happens, it happens to everyone, but there's always something to learn from every ‘failure’ and part of it is how you can better handle failures in the future. It teaches you how to work with people, share ideas, and grow in your self-confidence. If you take the time to self-reflect when you find yourself struggling in aspects of your life in college, you can really learn a lot about yourself and how you present.
It was through self-reflecting on some of my peer interactions that I realized my vocabulary was creating a rift between me and them, as several people as it as a way of me purposefully trying to make myself seem ‘better’ or ‘more educated’ when in reality I just forget a lot of simple words and end up using some ridiculous monstrosity in casual sentences. The more I made that known about myself in interactions, and mentioning how much I read, helped my interactions because it helped people to better understand WHY I speak that way. This lesson has continued to help me throughout my life.
Nine -- Missing Lectures is a Slippery Slope
My attendance rate was already a lost cause by the time I got to University (my highschool almost didn't let me graduate because I had an 87% absentee rate and something like 300 missed detentions but I was 1 of 3 Full Honors Students and they wanted the funding so they ecentually let me lol) but I have watched many a student crawl into this 'Chronic Skipping' pit with me in my years. Im not really sure why it happens, but basically as soon as you miss 2 lectures for no concrete reason (like a dentist appointment or cause your sick or something) it's game over for you. You'll miss two classes, then three, then four, then 2 a week, then 3 a week. Then you start skipping other subjects too. Then you end up like me and suddenly its the end of the term and you realize you've only attended 4 entire classes, one of which was the first day and the other 3 were exams. (True story, that was my 8am Political Science Class in my second year)
I hope this helps somewhat!!!! Let me know if you have any specific questions!
And thank you lovely, I’m chugging along doing my best trying to get back into my creative bubble which for some reason seems to be rather elusive and hard to track down thus far.
