A Student's Guide to Succeeding in Your First Year of College

First of all, congratulations on graduating high school and deciding to go to college. Soon, you'll be packing up your things and traveling to whichever school you've chosen, and your college experience will begin. This will probably be the first time in your life that you've truly lived on your own away from parents or other guardians, and it will be a big adjustment. There will be no one looking over your shoulder to make sure that you're eating well, doing your homework, following a curfew, or even changing your underwear on a daily basis. You might find it all too easy to slip into one of the many traps facing students in their first year away from home, and any one of them is a potential disaster.

The key to surviving your first year as a 'real' adult is to maintain a balance between your new freedoms and the responsibilities that inevitably accompany them. It may be overwhelmingly tempting to attend every party on campus, join every club, and go exploring in every spare moment, but what about such things as homework, study, and, yes, even laundry? It's vital to work to find that balance between fun and duty, not only so that you can keep your grades at an acceptable level, but also so that you don't burn out. The following are some tips that, hopefully, will help you find such a balance and, therefore, help you succeed in your first year at college.

Class time is not social hour. While this may seem obvious now, freshman year at college almost always includes large seminars in huge lecture halls, and at least one professor who could put an insomniac into a restful slumber. When the two are combined, it might seem like the perfect opportunity to either sign the attendance sheet and slip out the back, or to simply spend the class time texting to your friends. Don't do it! Not only will you miss out on learning the course material, professors have a great view of the whole class. Especially in those lecture halls, they see everything that's going on. They can see who's paying attention and who's sitting slumped in the seat, head down, fiddling with a cell phone. They also resort to such tactics as counting the signatures on the attendance sheet, and then counting the heads in the room. When the numbers don't match, there just might be a pop quiz. If that happens, you want to be present, awake, and alert. For the best chances of success, get to these classes a few minutes early, and get a seat in the front row, near the center. Don't skip classes, and be sure to take notes, even if this is a subject you also had in high school. Lectures are also some of the best chance you'll get to ask your professor questions about material you don't understand, so make use of it! Chances are that there is at least one other person in the room who also doesn't understand, and it's better to ask right away than get hopelessly bogged down and try to dig yourself out the night before an exam.

Homework is more important than it looks. Homework is the bane of just about every college student's life. It can take hours to finish, and interferes with time that could be spent at clubs, partying, or socializing. However, homework is vitally important. It might count for as little as ten percent of your final grade, but in reality, it matters far more than that. Most professors will take homework questions, change the numbers, and put the otherwise identical question on a quiz or exam. Homework is also a very good gauge of how well you understand the material. If you're getting consistently high scores on it, it means that you've got a good grasp of the material, and you should do well when the time comes for exams. By doing homework, you can also tell where you need extra help, and give you enough time to get it and learn the material before you find out the hard way. Since homework does take time, it's best to do it as it's assigned, rather than trying to get it all done at once. It's also a good idea to make sure to submit your homework regularly, and on time. Even if it's not graded, professors usually record whether or not it was submitted, and when the time comes to assign grades, you will usually get the benefit of the doubt if you've been turning it in.

Study in small groups, and not with your romantic interest. In the days leading up to exams, study groups get more and more common. But, unfortunately, it's very easy to get side-tracked when you study with friends, and turn study hour into social hour. It's important to take breaks, but you might find that it's all break, and no real review, and it will hurt you when you sit down to take your test and find that you can't remember anything. To avoid this, try to study in a small group of no more than two or three people, total. Study somewhere quiet, like a library or in a dorm room, and keep distractions to a minimum. Plan to take breaks when needed, and if you're not getting anywhere, call it a day. Nothing wastes time like non-productive studying. If you're having trouble studying in a group setting, plan to do it by yourself. Laundry day is a great time to do it, because you have to take a break every now and then to change loads, or put them away. Also, don't start studying the night before an exam. If you don't know it the night before, spending a sleepless night will not help you remember, and it will hurt your performance. Ideally, you should start studying for a regular exam three to four days in advance, and a final one to two weeks in advance.

Party, but not too hard. Nothing will destroy someone's college experience faster than being too much of a party animal. There's nothing wrong with going to them once in a while, and it's a good way to relax on the weekends, but you have to leave plenty of room in your schedule for homework, studying, and sleep. If you're extremely lucky, you might be able to skid by without doing homework or studying, but sleep is a true necessity; if you don't get it at night, you will end up getting it in class. Not only does sleeping in class look bad, it also keeps you from learning anything. It's a good idea to save your partying for Friday and Saturdays, and avoid the ones that occur in the middle of the week. Also, use Friday afternoons and Saturday during the day to catch up on homework and get ahead, if you can. This gives you Sunday to relax, recover, and do anything you need to do to prepare for the week ahead without having to worry about mounds of class work.

Make use of office hours. Almost all professors keep these, and most will tell you what they are on the first day of class. Make use of them! If you have any questions on the current material, if there's a homework problem you don't understand, or even if you just want more information on something, professors make themselves available during office hours specifically for this. Most of them are friendly and perfectly happy to offer extra help if you are willing to ask for it. This way, you can get one on one attention from the person teaching the class, and you can ask questions that you might have been too embarrassed to ask during lecture. The other side benefit of visiting during office hours is that you give a professor a chance to get to know you on a level that they won't get in a sixty person lecture. This can only help you, since even if you're struggling, the professor will know that you have been trying, something he or she may not be able to say about the majority of the class. When final grades are decided, this will always fall in your favor.

Find the student learning center, and get to know the people who work there. This center may have a different name at your college, but the general purpose is the same. This is the place you go when you need help with a class and can't talk to the instructor. They usually employ older students as tutors, and these will be a free resource to you, covered in the student fees everyone pays at the beginning of the year. These tutors can generally explain problems in a different way than the professor, and it might make it easier for you to understand them. They also tend to have more time available than a professor, and won't mind if you want to spend a lot of time getting help, since they often get paid by the hour. Your best bet is to seek out a tutor as soon as you have a problem rather than waiting until you're hopelessly lost. And, remember, there is no shame in having a tutor; almost everyone needs one sooner or later, and it's always better to ask for help than it is to fail.

There are many other tricks that you can find to help make your time at college as smooth as possible. You're going to have quite a time ahead of you, and you'll end up having a bit of a shakedown before you start getting in the groove and get truly comfortable with the workload and with the other demands on your time. Just keep the tips above in mind and try to stick to them, and you should find that the other adjustments won't be so hard to make. Focus on the big things, and let the little issues take care of themselves when you have to. Just remember, the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to ask for help in anything, school, social life, or other issues, as soon as it becomes a problem, and not when you're in over your head and can't see a way out of your problem. Congratulations again, and the best of luck as you head off to college!