I recently read an article posted at Triond titled “”What Not to Do Your First Year at University”. It looked like some hard won wisdom provided by a person with first hand experience. Here I’ll provide some suggestions from the other side of the coin–what you can do that will make this passage easier to negotiate.

1. Go to class and concentrate on your studies, as the school work is likely to be more difficult than it was at the school you came from. Also, moving forward to the next level of your education, or sometimes maintaining merit scholarships, requires good classroom performance. Remember, you have a job that you need to do well, and when you are a student, that job is giving attention to your education first. Let first things be first. Let the other aspects of college life fit in around this priority. My hardest class the last year of high school was easier than my easiest class my first year of college.

2. Select a major that interests you, or if you cannot choose, go to the career counseling assistance on campus and take such tests as may assist you in making a wise choice connected with your abilities and interests. You can always change majors later, but it is good to have one going in rather than being “undecided”. Chase your own dreams, not the dreams of your parents. What you will do for a living and the education you obtain fitting yourself for that is a major life decision. It is as much yours to make as is the decision of who you will marry.

3. Be a good roommate, even if the person you are staying with in the dorm or off campus is someone you didn’t know before moving in with them. This may include keeping your things picked up, not having noisy parties or loud music when they need to study, or going to the library to study if your roommate has friends over. If a roommate situation just isn’t working, change it. If you find it doesn’t work out repeatedly, change yourself. In my eight years in boarding schools, I never chose a single one of the 30 roommates I share quarters with. Living in close quarters with that many varied individuals was an excellent education in working with people that has benefitted me since.

4. Join positive clubs and organizations in the areas of your personal interest. Being involved in doing something positive to help others is a great way to get to know quality people and to make a contribution to society. Even taking a year out of your college education to work in a volunteer position of some sort where others are benefitted can be a major enriching and broadening experience. It also looks great on your resume when your education is completed, and you are facing the competition for available jobs. Don’t join too many organization, or accept too many responsibilities. These are meant for broadening you, not replacing your education.

5. Don’t “drop off the radar” spiritually. If you already have a faith, seek out ways to continue participation and involvement. If you are not from a religious background, consider including an exploration of this aspect of humanity as a part of broadening your cultural and personal horizons. Join a Bible study group or attend a local religious organization of your choice. A spiritual connection can help provide perspective and give meaning to existence. A regular time each day for prayer and the reading of suitable devotional material can keep you anchored and allow you to form good life values. This is a time in your life when you are making crucial decisions that will affect you forever. Why not hook into all the best help you can in achieving this? Ancient wisdom that has lasted isn’t obsolete.

6. Recognize that one of the major benefits a person can obtain from their time in school is to find the person they will share their life with long term. If you never graduate, but meet and marry an excellent spouse, you stand to benefit long term. Not everything that is important in life shows up on a report card, or can be calculated in dollars and cents. College and university is probably the best place you will ever be for making an informed selection from among many possible future life partners. Once you graduate, meeting people is more difficult, as you are generally thrown into the workplace with more limited social options. As 90% of your future emotional happiness or suffering will result from the quality of your primary relationship, consider that seeking of a suitable life partner a goal as worthy and as crucial as obtaining a degree.

7. Ask questions in class. You may think it makes you look stupid to request a teacher to clarify what they are talking about when they use advanced vocabulary, or you are not sure what they are saying. This is not the case the majority of the time. Asking questions lets them know you are interested in what they are teaching, and in most cases will increase their respect for your intelligence rather than lessening it.

8. Sit on the front row and as near the center as you can in as many classes as you can. This is dead center for the “A Zone”, which is the place in a classroom’s seating where those with the highest grades usually sit. The entire front row, and the seats directly back from the teachers desk are the “Golden T” for those who wish to gain an advantage in obtaining good grades through simply chosing the best seats in the classroom. The teacher will be more likely to see you and you the teacher if you sit squarely in front of them. Also, the rest of the classroom will be more likely to see you and hear your interactions with the teacher. All of this is good, if doing well in class and out of class matters to you.

9. Borrow as absolutely little money as you can in order to achieve your educational goals. It may seem like easy money for tuition and living expenses is readily available. But it doesn’t take too many thousands of dollars needing to be paid back upon graduation to end up seriously impacting your financial future for many years to come.

10. Avoid mind altering substances, including alcohol, smoking, and the recreational use of drugs. All of these impair your general health and particularly that most important organ’s function–your brain. By avoiding these things, you gain an advantage in performance in nearly every area of life. In a competitive environment like the classroom, work place, or social scene, this matters.

11. Don’t date someone you know you wouldn’t marry. Don’t sleep around. Why put yourself and others at risk? A bad relationship can drain away enormous energies you need at a crucial passage in your life–the time you are getting your education. A good relationship will add to your self-respect and to your hope for the future. Better no relationship at all, at least for the present, than one that can rob you of your future happiness. When I broke off a long term relationship that was going nowhere, and began dating the girl I eventually married, my Grade Point Average jumped an entire letter grade. I hadn’t realized how much energy attempting to make that less-than-ideal relationship was taking, until I ended it.
 
12. When you have multiple tests in a short period of time, set aside blocks of time in which you will study for particular tests, to be certain you study for each adequately. Even a short nap after a few hours of studying can help your mind process and recall information more readily. If at all possible, sleep between the time you study for a particular major test and the time you take it. I stumbled on this technique and called it “sleep loading”. It allowed me to process major amounts of information more easily. Another technique I discovered worked when I needed to write a major paper was to simply not eat until I had completed the project. Lack of food allowed me to think more clearly and rapidly.

13. Getting a part time job while going to school can help you schedule your time more effectively, and may actually increase your Grade Point Average. It can also allow for a little extra money, which can be helpful. On the other hand, how much you can earn at a part time job during high school or while going to college is insignificant compared with how much you can earn by way of scholarships by keeping your grades as high as possible. So make sure you don’t load up on so much work that your school work suffers. Learning to work is something that is a transferrable life skill. Whether you end up being a plumber or a brain surgeon, having developed the ability to work will be a major benefit. I consider the 30 jobs I did helping earn my tuition to be “the other half of my education”. Book work alone doesn’t necessarily prep a person adequately for real life. Work and study together are a better option, where possible.

14. If you can, take as many college credit classes as possible while you are still in high school, and get as good of grades as you can in them. Some are able to take enough such classes that they can cut out as much as a year from the time needed to gain a university degree–which generally is a huge cost savings. Also, you are already toughening up your scholastic skills in advance. 

15. Realize that even though your studies may be difficult your first year, things do get easier as you progress. You learn to study more effectively and teachers tend to ease up a bit on the grades the further along you progress in your education. The first year or two are the toughest. So hang in there.

16. Study your teacher as much as the content of the material they give to you. Each teacher, like each of your future employers, is different from the others. Each is looking for something they will reward with a good grade. Half of any class is figuring out exactly what the teacher wants. The other half is giving them that. Be willing to learn even from teachers you may disagree with on any number of things. I had one teacher with whom I disagreed with nearly everything that he said. Yet he forced me to think more than any five of my other instructors combined. When I saw him many years later as an old man, I made a point to thank him. We can learn something from anybody, even if it is only what we will never do, nor teach, once we are in their position.

17. Realize your first year on campus that you are going from “the top of the heap” as a graduating senior from high school to the “bottom of the heap” as an incoming freshman in college. Pretty much everybody on campus knows more than you do, doesn’t care what you think, and isn’t likely to respect you the way the underclassmen in your past school did. So speak softly and act in a way that will gain you the respect of your teachers and your peers. You might have “had it” where you came from. But you’ll need to “earn it all over again” in the new setting of the university. Walk humbly, yet with confidence.

18. The greatest disadvantage a person can have in a university setting is not knowing what they hope to achieve once their education is finished. A college and graduate education is a great stepping stone to a life goal that lies beyond it. But it can be an expensive stumbling stone for a person who really hasn’t a clue why they are there, or what being there will add to their future. It might be better to take a year off and work, or to travel, or to volunteer in an area one might consider as a life’s work than to arrive on campus without a clue as to really why you are there. That’s a set up for failure.

19. Seriously consider not getting married and starting your family until you have completed a majority of your education. These challenges, on top of your educational ones, can result in life overload, and can prevent those who might from completing their education. It will be a lot harder to go back to school once you are married and have started your family than it will waiting to begin those things until you have achieved your educational goals.

20. Remember, you are at the time in your life when you must deal with “the Big Three” choices every person must make, if you haven’t already. Preferably, make those Big Three decisions in this order: A. What am I going to do about God? B. What am I going to do for a living? C. Who will I spend my life with as a life partner? These are the most crucial decisions you will ever make, and making them out of order can cause major confusion later on. These choices are inescapable. When it comes to “the Big Three”, not choosing is also choosing.

Some of the suggestions above may seem initially mutually exclusive. Putting it all together in life, even as a student, is rather like juggling. You need to be able to do more than one thing at the same time to succeed. I seriously thought I would flunk every single class I had my first year in college. I decided to hang in there anyway, for at least a year, even if I did. I’m glad I did. I didn’t actually flunk any class ever. In fact, by the time I was in graduate school, I was earning A’s with great consistency. (In fact, in my most recent post graduate work, I was setting the top edge of the grading scale in pretty much every class.) In the process of gaining my education, I met and married the lady I have shared my life with for almost three decades. Not everyone is so fortunate. But maybe a few hints from someone who has been over the road ahead can be of help for those still making the journey.