What I Learned in College (So Far)

I have been in college for a little over a year now. I'm on break right now for four months. In that time I have learned a few very important life lessons that I will take with me, and these are not just about academics. I don't know if college reflects the "real world" but these are, after all, real people. One of the things about college is that every type of person imaginable is likely to be found there. In my first week I met rednecks, hippies, potheads, and plenty of regular people in between. In the rest of the time I have run into crazy preachers, philosophy nuts, people who take academics too seriously, and people who are just there to party. Anyway, on to the lessons.

Lesson one: college is harder than high school. I got an A in economics in high school. I got a B in college putting forth the same effort (and ironically my high school econ teacher's dad was my professor in college). I got a B in art when I should have gotten an A. I got high Cs and low Bs in sciences when in high school I got high Bs and low As. The ultimate lesson is that, all things considered, if you put forth the same effort in college that you put into high school you will get one letter grade lower in the same classes. This is not actually a bad thing, as it is generally expected that you will get a slightly lower GPA in college. Ever wonder why they only accept the A and B students? Because most of them end up being B and C students, and the C students end up being D students. That being said I did manage to score two As, and sadly, one F (which was thankfully offset in my GPA by my otherwise good grades, which leads me up to another lesson.

Lesson two: who you have as a professor matters. In high school some teachers were nicer, others were jerks. Some were helpful, some were not. Still, all the teachers in my high school taught things the same way. We had four math teachers, and they all taught the same stuff. In college the professor pretty much follows guidelines rather than rules, in other words they can pretty much teach the class however they want. The class I failed in was Logic. Logic is a tough subject to begin with, but this particular professor decided to teach a 100 level class like a 300 level class. She also taught us nothing in class and preferred to spend the three hours "reviewing" our homework. A math professor I had came in half asleep every day. My professor of something called "Introduction to Liberal Education" was another matter. I got an A in the class so I was glad, but he drove us hard. And he taught it differently. I talked to other people who had the class (the point of which I still can't explain) and he did not use most of the same materials, even the same books. There was some overlap, but he preferred to spend most of the time focusing on philosophy (he was a philosophy professor) and the supposed greatness of British culture over American culture (he was British). In my economics class we just had tests and no homework, another person who lived in my building was loaded up. Be sure to check RateMyProfessors.com before taking a class. The way the professor chooses to teach (and how hard they choose to make it) might be the difference between a good grade and a bad grade, whereas in high school it was not.

Lesson three: always know what you are doing before you go in. I went in to college and ended up taking a couple of classes I did not need to take. They boosted my credits, but did they really help toward my major? The answer is no. For instance I thought I needed a foreign language to graduate so I took Russian for a semester before dropping, which I did when I found out that for my major I did not need a foreign language (and even if I did I would not recommend Russian unless you want to work for the State Department).

Lesson four: college is not like it is in the movies. Believe it or not, college is kind of boring. The movies make college out to be this awesome place where people just run around and do whatever they want. College is not just slacking off, partying, and drifting through classes. Even at a middle tier university like mine it takes some real work ethic and discipline. Also, during the winter I found myself sitting around doing absolutely nothing. If you are not a party animal or the sort of person who gets involved in civic activities and clubs then chances are you will spend a good amount of time sitting around bored. I would recommend picking up a job on the side, because you will have plenty of spare time to do so.

Lesson five: spare time does not always mean success. Speaking of spare time, the more you have the lazier you get. I went in thinking that with so much spare time I would be able to get things done. In fact it made me a heck of a lot lazier. If I had a job to work things around I might have been more on top of my work and studying. I did not do bad this year, but I could have done better. The lazier you are in your spare time, the lazier you will become with academics.

Lesson six: screwing up your sleeping schedule will slowly kill you. People in college often take advantage of their freedom by staying up as late as they want and napping in the afternoon. Why not? Nobody will tell you to be quiet and go to bed and most people do not have jobs to get up for. Class attendance is mandatory in some cases, but mostly not and if so the only punishment is they will knock a few points off your grade after not showing up like five times or so. In other words if you don't manage your time don't expect somebody to manage it for you. I fell into the bad habit of sleeping at strange, interspersed times. It isn't healthy. You need your REM. You need to go into deep sleep which requires more than two hours at a time. On the flipside if you get too much sleep you feel like crap. Believe it or not you will be more awake on four or five hours of sleep than you will if you get twelve, I do not know why this is but it is. It is unhealthy to get more than seven hours a night. The bottom line is that you cannot bankroll sleep, if you try this it will work for a time but it will come back and start to slowly kill you.

Lesson seven: if you are uptight, don't go to college. I am not an uptight person but if I was I can see how I would hate college. You have so many different types of people around and some might not be the type of people you are used to, especially if you come from a relatively conservative community like I do. Some people will also be incredibly annoying (students and professors included) and you will want to punch them in the face, but you cannot. I already knew this though, after working in a supermarket. The bottom line is that you have to tolerate everybody. People will not change to be what you want them to be.

Lesson eight: I should have taken more AP classes in high school. In spite of having taken some classes I did not need in college this was offset by the AP classes I took in high school. I was able to come in with ten credits which gave me sophomore status after first semester, and if I throw in an extra credit load sometime in college I might be able to graduate a semester early. Just to demonstrate how much ten credits are you have to think about the fact that you take fourteen to sixteen credits on average a semester. And if you take an AP test it costs about eighty dollars a piece, which is far cheaper than taking a class at college. I so desperately wish I would have taken more, this also would have gotten a few core classes out of the way. Unlike my other lessons, there isn't really anything I can do about this one anymore.

This is what I have learned so far. If I learn anything new next year I will write a piece about it. As you can tell much of what I learned is not academic. In fact after taking core classes you might feel you haven't really learned anything academic. There really is no reason for these other than tradition, but it is a tradition that isn't going away any time soon. The best thing to keep in mind is that if you can slog your way through these classes (some of which you will undoubtedly hate) you can get to your major. Some people set off taking core classes until they are a senior. I by contrast did not take any major classes and took all my core classes the first year. This is rare, it was hell (I had virtually no classes I enjoyed) but at least I got it out of the way. This is not a lesson I learned, this is something I had in mind when I came in.