Starting a college life is not easy. After entering college, you will face new situations that will be extremely different from any you have previously met. Apart from having to find a place to eat and sleep, you will also need to learn how to manage your finances, learn new social skills, form new friends and engage in a new form of thinking.
Here are 5 things to bear in mind in order to your make college life much easier:
Adapt Fast
Perhaps the first problem you will encounter is the substitution of the lecture instead of a normal class recitation to which you were already used to in high school.
Lectures require that you develop a new way of learning. Why? Because the mental processes involved in a class oral recitation are different from those used in listening to a lecture.
With a lecture system, the study materials may not be focused or limited to your textbook syllabus. A lecturer will basically let his knowledge flow freely. New college students will find it a big problem because the materials may at first look unorganized.
As soon as the words have left the mouth of the lecturer, the materials will stop to be accessible to you. Because of this, you need to develop a unique mental attitude and unique mental habits. If you are lucky, some colleges will store the copy of the lecture in the library should you need to listen to it again.
However, don’t dwell on it. Such recordings are usually considered a hot item and are usually unavailable due to hot demand. Thus, the first thing you need to do is to adapt fast in learning a new way of absorbing information.
Pay Better Attention
In college, you must develop new habit of paying full attention. Because a lecture may lasts an hour or more – you need to learn how to sustain yourself during those periods. Go to the library and learn how to memorize better – especially memorizing things that you hear.
You must at the same time learn how to take notes – organizing them on the fly and being able to understand the notes later. This kind of skill will help you not only in college but also later in your life.
Love Reading
In college, the amount of books you need to read could be enormous.
Therefore, you must learn how to read and comprehend faster. Take some time to learn these skills before entering college and you will not be shocked by the amount of materials that you need to process.
If in high school, an assignment may cover a few pages, your assignment in college may span twenty to thirty, mostly requiring a great number of references compared to what you have been accustomed to. Therefore, develop a love for books and learn speed reading.
Step Up
Bear in mind that, college demands not only a bigger quantity but also a higher quality of work. As a college student, your intellectual responsibilities have increased. To the outside people, you are now as a person of considerable scholastic attainment and as a result, they demands more of you than before.
In high school you may have been the best student in your class. In college, however, you will find a great number of brighter students – from many schools around the states or even from all over the world. If you want to be the best, you have to make the resolution to work much harder. Better than that, bear in mind that your work from now on must also be of better quality.
Be Independent
A college student has no pre-assigned daily timetable. The only time definitely assigned for your work is the time spent in the lecture room or laboratory. Apart from that, it is up to you.
This may be a news for celebration. Before you jump in joy, realize that arranging your time and juggling homework, social life, and your free time is not as easy as it may sound. Enjoy the freedom and the independence. However, organize your time as efficiently as possible to avoid trouble.
All these may sound like a lot of hard work.
It is!
No one said college life would be easy. Banish the thought that you are going to have knowledge “pumped into” you. You need to learn a lot of new things, learn to be independent and learn to manage your time and social life.
Hopefully, the above 5 things will help lay the foundation that you need before your college life.
These educational advice is brought by The Inspirational Quote Site. We havequotes for students and also a few pages of quotes for teachers
Visit us for inspiration before entering college. Who knows, what wisdom you’ll find in our site.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lela_Iskandar
http://EzineArticles.com/?5-Things-You-Must-Have-To-Succeed-in-Your-College-Life&id=883190
Image Credit: Flickr – MattHileo
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