September is officially here. All the public schools started, and I love seeing all the school bus go around the neighborhood. Quarter colleges will start in couple of weeks from now. Excited? I am!! Four years of college went very fast for me. There were successes and mistakes. I'd like to share some advices and lessons I learned. I will give some heads up to succeed in college.
1. Stay Connected: This is very important to stay connect with professors, advisors, and classmates. I recommend all the students to constantly seek their academic advisors, make several friends in each class, talk to all their professors throughout the term. It was very beneficial from my experience because I received job informations and leadership opportunities from connections. I know there were shy people, and I was one of them. I encouraged myself to be more outgoing by believing most professors, classmates, and advisor are nice and willing to talk. It will become easier and easier.
2. Consider Quality Over Quantity: I'd recommend everyone to get involved on campus. Just like I said previously, stayed connected on campus. However, it is important to get good grades in all of the classes, too. I don't recommend students to take TOO many credits and get TOO involved. It is better to take less classes and do well than take a lot of classes and do bad. Same as activities, it is more effective to only focus on the small amount. I took 12 to 16 credits each term and I did two activities. I did well in the classes and I enjoyed all the activities. There were times I took 17 to 18 credits, and I was struggling. I regret I did that. I admit there are people who can take 20 quarter credits, do leadership programs, and work multiples jobs and still managed to get 4.0 GPA. Not everyone are like that. At at least I am not.
3. Have a Plan/Budget For Time and Money: College classes are very difficult and expensive, so student life would extremely busy with school and work. Time and money are the main struggles for most students. For me, time had been always the shortage. There were countless times I felt I did not have enough time to study for a test and I rushed to turn homework. Later, I learned to manage my time by having a study plan and stick with it. If I planed in the first place, it is less likely to get it done and be confident with it.
4. Use Campus Resources: There are a lot of great resource on campus, and sadly some of students don't even know them. Here some of the resource helped survive in college.
-Library: They have 24 hour online help, so I used it to find all the
-Tutoring Center: It has intelligent tutors. They helped me with my homework and even aced my test. It also offers free workshops for public speaking, time management, stress management, test taking strategy, note taking strategy, graphing calculator, excel, and GRE.
-Writing Center: I always have them look at my paper before I turn it in. All the writing tutors were kind and gave me a lot of suggestions. They even have citation guide.
-Career Center: This is where I started to write my resume and cover letter. I also learned many tips for interviews and built my confidence. I even landed my first job through the job posting from there. I can't thank them enough.
5. Reach Out For Help: Although everything was well planned and all the decisions were on the right track, there were still possibility for a college student to be broke. There are times when changes happens before plans and things can be unavoidable. When that happens, it is better to ask for family and friends to help as needed. Don't be shy. Families are always willing to help, and good friends would love help as much as they can.
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