In today’s society a college education is a must. Unfortunately, when you arrive at college you may find that you are vastly unprepared to undertake the future educational prospects ahead of you. In fact, you may find that other college students that you’ve talked to have informed you that college is primarily a place for fun and games. Many students who fall into this trap normally come to the realization that they’ve been caught in it when they find out that they are either failing multiple classes or just plainly doing horrible in them. There are many expectations imposed upon college students, and everyone generally expects you to know and understand them. Even though they have never actually came out and told you what they are and how to succeed at them, they still expect you to excel.
To succeed in college you first need to learn your primary responsibilities as a student. The main responsibility you should hold in this area is complete whatever homework is assigned to you. In college, teachers no longer assign “busy work,” they assign homework that is relevant to what will be discussed in class. A good majority of what will you do and what you will read in your homework assignments will show up on your tests and quizzes.
Another one of your primary responsibilities in college is attending your classes. Most students initially marvel at the idea that they do not need to attend their classes if they do not want to. Hopefully you will not fall into this dire trap also! In class, you will learn a plethora of information that you don’t already know. If you miss those critical hours of instruction can make a detrimental impact on your grade, and could mean the difference between passing and failing that course. College teachers also tend to spend a lot of time in class on topics they believe are important, which means the information presented will most likely make an appearance on a test or quiz that you will eventually take.
Now that we’re done taking a look at the educational aspect of school, we must take a look at the social aspect. The most important thing after education in college is making new friends. It may not seem all that important to you, but it prepares you for the working world where you get ahead by making connections.
One of the most important things you can do to facilitate the social process is maintaining a recognizable “style.” Having a specific style makes it easier for other people to distinguish you in a crowd. There are also fewer restrictions on what other classmates will find acceptable about your appearance than there were in high school. One example of something others would dislike is a person who wears the same clothing day in and day out. Most people would not want to be around them because it gives them an aura of not caring.
Another major factor in your social growth is the ability to pick the correct friends. As much as we downplay cliques in college, some very basic groups will still exist and it would help you immensely if you could find friends who shared similar interests. Once you’ve found a set of friends you feel comfortable with to fall back on, it will be easier to make friends with people that you normally wouldn’t have talked to in high school.
Now that you have an idea of what college is really all about, you can go out and rule the campus. If you excel in your schoolwork and find that you feel like you’re on the set of Cheers because everyone knows your name then you can say you’ve been successful and have accomplished the primary goals that all college students should complete.
I chose this topic because I felt that many college students could potentially benefit from it. Not many people come straight out and tell you how it is, and for some people it could take a semester or two just to start to fit in or to start to accomplish the goals they had set forth for themselves. I was misled into believe a lot of things about college that aren’t true, and I felt a need to prevent others from falling into the same potential trap. My only saving grace was that I had somebody set me on the right path before the consequences could have had the potential to become devastating.
Within the paper, I realize, I left a lot of information about college out. Most of the experience you gather becomes a form of tacit knowledge and most students should understand the basic functioning of what the college life should be like. Most people just need to be gently nudged onto the right path again so they’ll perform the way they’re supposed too. I also left out a lot of information that I believe could’ve been intrinsically detrimental to the student reading this. If I would’ve included information about how much fun you can have at parties and how there’s always a way to obtain an alcoholic beverage, the student would have the potential to actually consider that track more intensely and would have a chance of being grabbed by the misfortune of most students.
The information that I chose to include about the academic side of school is prevalent to me because most students are misled into believing that you don’t have to do homework in college and that you don’t have to go to class in college. The other information about school I included (the social aspect) was to appeal to the quieter and shyer students coming out of high school. Most of those students would tend to be the same in college as they were in high school, but if they could receive a reaffirming nudge, they’d be able to become a “social butterfly” and talk to more people.
All-in-all, this paper was meant to appeal to whatever student might be coming into college and give them an understanding of what’s to come. The one thing that keeps ringing in my mind, though, is that I’m not a junior or a senior, so I’m not sure how much I’d actually recommend this paper be read by other students. We will all make mistakes, but we will try to keep them as small and few in number as possible.
