Last time I hit you with some general advice about going to college. Mostly though I talked about my experience of being on both sides of the divide (student/teacher) and empathizing with the difficulties of seemingly abandoning your former life (family, friends, jobs, familiar environments, etc.) to attend college somewhere else with people you don’t know and professors you’ve never heard of in fields you are either too (or completely “un-“) certain about. It’s a challenging shift for anyone. So I have some advice based on my own time as a student as well as my time as a grad student/instructor for new college students this fall semester. It’s not necessarily profound advice because it is so simple. At any rate…
1) Worry less about your digital social networks (now easily accessible via the web) and more about your physical social networks. If you spend more time talking to your high school friends via a computer than you spend with new people face-to-face then you’re doing college wrong. 2) Join a club. Do it now. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care whether you’re already an expert chess player or you’ve just always wanted to learn the game: join a group of new people. Will it be awkward at first? Probably. Will you be nervous? Sure. Will it be okay? Yes. Yes it will. And guess what — you’ll be taking care of number one above at the same time. 3) Go to class. This shouldn’t need to be said but (as someone who’s been on the teaching side of the equation) just go. If you’re not learning anything (or you learned that you don’t really want to learn that particular thing) you have two options: drop the class, or teach yourself. The internet is a wonderful place (and I’m a big fan of web-based learning via free tools and websites). 4) Don’t worry. Figure out who you are. Push yourself. Succeed. One last thing: good luck.