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Surviving College

What I Wish I Knew

By Erik LeonPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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I only started my freshman year of college a few weeks ago, and so my thoughts on what I wish I had done differently are still pretty recent in my head. I’m not a senior reflecting on what I think I remember of my college career, but instead a freshman still going through it in the present. As such, here are my recommendations of things to do prior to going to your college.

Scheduling:

This may be a special case for me and people similar to me, but do NOT wait to get credit for classes you’ve already taken. My college offered placement exams for math and Spanish, but I felt like not taking them since I’d eventually get credit through the AP courses I took. The mistake I made was thinking that the AP credits would go in soon enough for me to get the classes I wanted. I’m a mechanical engineering major, and as such math is a very important part of any of my classes. By the time my AP credits went in and got me my math credits, two of the three classes I wanted to take were filled. In short, definitely take placement exams and make sure you can get your credits taken care of as soon as possible. The last thing you’ll want is to have your necessary classes taken, or have to stress over fixing your schedule to fix the limited classes available.

Friends:

I happened to choose a college where not many of my high school friends chose to go. While most friends don’t stick together in college anyways, it’s particularly difficult to be forced out of those relationships so abruptly. Of the many friends I had in high school, only 2-3 of them ended up coming to this college. Not that others will be in my situation, but having friends in college, or at least a few very close ones, is definitely the way to go. I’ve only been here a few weeks, and college is already a bit stressful. There’s a lot of homework and not a lot of free time, so having friends to help take your mind off stress is very beneficial. While there is nothing wrong with alone time or going to dinner alone, forgetting your troubles is a lot easier with a group of friends who can make you laugh or talk about their days. Along with that, colleges tend to hold events to get to know other people or even get to know your friends better than before, and I definitely recommend going to those.

Procrastination:

As a high school student, I would never study and I would never do my homework or projects ahead of time. The old saying is “Due tomorrow? Do Tomorrow,” right? College is a completely different game. While syllabus week was fairly easy, I severely underestimated the workload that I’d be hit with in the second week. I went into the week with the same mentality I had in high school: “Meh, it’s not due tomorrow I don’t have to worry about it.” Well, that week flew by and before I knew it, it was Friday, and all of my homework was due. On that particular Friday, I had a 600 word essay to write, 20 assignments of Spanish to do, a Calculus worksheet, and a coding assignment to do. Not to mention that I had classes until 3 in the afternoon. I had 9 hours to do a week’s worth of homework, and while I did manage to pull it off, it’s not a situation I recommend to anyone else. While this week I still had homework to do on Friday, I kept up on it throughout the week so I had much less to do. This may seem cliche, and you might be thinking “This guy isn’t me, I’d do fine with homework and procrastination,” but trust me. College is NOT high school. Don’t treat it the same way.

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