Turn Back the Clock
Dear 18 year old me
It’s 2016 and we are nearing the end of our undergraduate career. While I am ecstatic to tell you we are preparing for graduate school and other future endeavors, I must say the road here was quite the journey. Our progression into college was something you are looking forward to but I’m here to warn you not to expect it to be all sunshine and rainbows. At the beginning, transitioning into college presented us with many challenges and, due to our own faults, we climbed aboard the “struggle-bus”. But if I could turn back the clock, I would have made the road a little easier for us.
Back in high school, I can recall our methods of studying…actually our methods were to not have any at all! This mostly stemmed from the fact that good grades came extremely easy to us, and the word “try” was kind of foreign. In fact, you likely have an exam tomorrow and are binge watching Dance Moms or practicing your clarinet until your lips fall off.
Let’s fast forward to freshman year of college. You don’t remember this since it hasn’t happened yet, but I want to share with you this little gem. We were sitting in our first college biology course and you were texting your boyfriend ludicrous amounts of emojis rather than paying attention. When grades came out, we were not happy at the “C” that we received. It looked so demonic, as if it would sprout horns the harder we gaped at it. Don’t be surprised; you spent the night before the exam reading the whole first volume of the Hunger Games series.
If it makes you feel better, many students struggle in the transition from high school to college. Although some may miss home or quickly figure out they have no idea how to cook a simple meal (except ramen noodles), many may find their weaknesses to dwell in areas of academics. Like us, many people rely too much on their high school experiences as this one fellow explains.
A huge issue we encountered during the start of our college career is we had an apathetic approach to the whole process: you didn’t attend the college you wanted nor were many of our friends staying in the area (just for the record, those things ended up being rather trivial). Like the author in the article mentioned previously, we thought we were set for college but ended up doing a tuck and roll. I want to share with you a few pieces of advice that I wish we had considered sooner, thus preventing the limping that followed.
1.) Start studying two weeks in advance. According to Cal Newport’s book, How to Win at College: Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country’s Top Students, this method is vital for the success of college students. Simply put, long and short-term memory are two different ball parks. If you study in advance and keep revisiting information, the more likely that information will be stored long-term. Due to this, that information will lead to easier/quicker recall and therefore better grades overall! So please bring your books home from school, your band locker has no use for them.
2.) Don’t study in groups. Cal Newport tells us isolation will help us focus better and therefore learn more efficiently. Let’s face it, Cupcake, you talk way too much about your cats and get distracted really easily around people. While we’re at it I should also mention…
3.) Don’t study in your room. This is your version of a man-cave and as such it has all of the fun things you love: Facebook, leisurely reading, SEGA and a bed that seems to call your name as soon as your open the door. Need I say more? GO TO THE LIBRARY! Also, if you see your friend Michelle while in there, keep walking. She doesn’t need to hear about how your cat chased string hanging from it’s own butt this weekend.
4.) Use three days to write a paper. I know this one is hard, but please listen… writer’s block is not your friend. In fact, you know from your past writing experiences that you tend to change and edit drafts over and over. This isn’t something you have grown out of. For example, this letter I am writing to you has experienced the redo button multiple times! So again, you’re gonna need more than one day for papers in college, especially because you can get pretty critical of your writing.
5.) Create a Sunday Ritual. We were always pretty lazy over the weekends, especially if a Bones marathon was on. It’s time for a change. Wake up and start your day off right: read a book, exercise, get ahead on this week’s reading and oh, how about starting that essay you have due in three days? Sundays should be the day that parallels pulling back on the arrow. We are getting prepared for what’s ahead and hopefully, with this method, we will fly through the week!
6.) Sign up for something the first week. This was a huge mistake for our mental health during our first two years of college. We quit band, chorus, writing for yearbook and even barely painted. You may be baffled by this because these were our outlets. But due to one thing or another we got lazy with our hobbies and even abandoned a few all together. At some point, we began studying properly; but that was all we did. Unfortunately, this left us with a mundane lifestyle which eventually led to being in a dark place for a little bit. You need to remember your passions, because your happiness is so important!
7.) Choose goals and explore routes. This is so crucial because we have so many interests and have been indecisive with what we wanted to do with our life. In fact, people tried telling us what to do and we blindly listened due to our immaturity. However, you will learn that you can’t figure this out unless you explore your passions. I’ll be honest with you that we looked around and played the field, if you will. Once you find “the one” (I am not talking about boys right now), you realize how important it is to ensure you explore your options; this way you don’t settle for second best!
As it stands right now, we ended up changing a lot over the years and we definitely improved in our abilities to conquer college. If I could go back, I wish we would have read Cal Newport’s book sooner. Although we could have benefited from my current knowledge of other things like how boys are kind of dumb and you shouldn’t leave your cat alone with string, I think this advice with school is the most important. You got almost every other aspect of life down pat, but college was a challenge that took a while to figure out. As we prepare for graduate school, I am taking this advice with us with in hopes it will continue to help us reach our goals.
