Advice to a College Freshman


Academics

  • Choose a (relatively) easy major, and easy classes.
    Short explanation: I think you should 1) be happy in the now, 2) figure out what you want to do, and 3) get good at it. Easy major/classes best allows you to do this.
    Hard classes make 1) and 2) really hard because they’re time consuming and stressful. Hard classes might help you with 3), but less than you’d think, and not enough to outweigh the harm they do to 1) and 2). Life is a marathon, you could accomplish 3) later.
    Long explanation: https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/b937e462c9a1.
  • For the same reasons, don’t worry too much about your grades.
    If your grades stress you out too much, consider not even looking at them.
    Consider that sometimes spending 3 hours a week in a class to get a B might be better than spending 20 hours a week to get an A. Sometimes it’s just not worth it.
  • Research classes and majors a lot before choosing them (use ratemyprofessors, ask people, use facebook groups, sit in on classes etc.)
  • If you are unsure of what you want to do (which you probably are), choose to upwind.
  • Explore your interests.
  • Don’t be afraid to drop a class. A bad class can ruin your semester.
  • Don’t be afraid to change your major. A bad major can ruin your college experience/life.
  • Try taking a class with a professor who’s supposed to be amazing.
  • Use khanacademy.
  • Use the feynman technique.
  • Keep track of all the things that are unclear to you; then go to office hours to have your professor/TA explain it to you. Professors/TAs are often much better at explaining things one-on-one than they are during lecture.
  • Most colleges offer free tutoring. It might be a good resource. Also, they’ll often help you with homework questions you can’t figure out (read: do them for you).
  • Don’t bring your laptop/phone to class if it’s too distracting.
  • Some professors are really smart. Talk to them! Take advantage of the fact that you have some of the top minds in the world to discuss things with.
  • Consider taking PE classes. They’re an easy A, and you get a chance to learn cool things for free.
  • Wait and see if the textbook is necessary before buying it. “Mandatory” often doesn’t mean mandatory. And of course, buy online.
  • Try recording your lectures and listening to them later.
  • Going to class isn’t always worth it. Sometimes you could learn better on your own.
  • In some classes, you won’t really get anything out of them if you didn’t do the reading before hand. So… make sure you do the reading before you go to these classes.
  • Ask questions during the tests. You’ll often get hints as to what the answers are.
  • Don’t cheat. The penalties for cheating in college are much more severe than they were in high school.
  • Argue for more points on tests/assignments only when it’s worth it. Some professors are agreeable, some aren’t.
  • Try taking summer classes at a community college and transferring them over (if your college allows you to; check first). They’re much cheaper and easier.
  • Find the best place for you to study. Sometimes it’s your room, sometimes the library, sometimes a coffee shop etc. Also, try moving around and changing it up.

Career Direction

  • Don’t use classes too much to explore your interests.
    1) Often times they’re not a good indicator of whether or not you’ll like the field (especially whether or not you’ll like a job in the field). Don’t be turned off by a bad class, and don’t be turned on by a good class.
    2) It’s an inflexible way of exploring interests. If you choose to explore an interest and realize you don’t like it, you’re still stuck there for 4 months. Don’t get stuck somewhere you don’t want to be for 4 months.
  • Read I Graduated High School. Now What? and The Process of Exploring Your Interests.
  • Use 80,000 Hours.
  • If you want to become a doctor because you want to help people, read this.
  • Consider starting a startup.
  • Learn design. It’s not useful for everything, but it’s useful for a lot more than you’d think. Start here.
  • Use your summers wisely. Learn and explore. Don’t just get a minimum wage job. There’s a big opportunity cost to doing that.
  • Increase your luck surface area.
  • Apply to a lot of scholarships and stuff. There’s a lot that are offered, and you have a good chance at getting one if you’re persistent.

Productivity

  • Understand that time is an investment.
  • Prioritize and cut. You can’t do everything. If you try to, you’ll just end up stressed out. Prioritize and cut is a very important piece of advice.
    Keep a list of things you want to do, but don’t have time to do.
    You can’t say yes to every social opportunity. There’ll be a lot of them, and they’ll be tempting, but again — prioritize and cut.
  • Underbook your schedule. Make sure you have free time left over. It’s too stressful when you have to be doing something in every interval of time throughout the day.
  • Don’t watch tv, play video games, waste time messing around on the internet etc. There are too many better things to be doing in college and at this point in your life.
  • Minimize your travel time. If you have to go to lower campus, do all the things there that you need to do. Don’t keep going back and forth.
  • Consider using a bike or something to get around campus.
  • If your college has a bus system (it probably does), utilize it. They usually have an app or something that shows you when a bus will be at each stop.
  • Utilize the time you have in between classes.
  • Consider listening to audio books to make use of the time you spend walking, shopping etc.
  • If you’re low on time, don’t spend 2 hours working out. A 2 hour workout might be optimal for your body, but remember, you can’t do everything. Try time efficient workouts like burpees or circuit training.
  • Get good ear plugs. Or listen to focus@will (or listen to white noise generators).
  • Big chunks of time are very valuable. See Downloading the Task.
  • Try hard to stay on top of your work. When you fall behind, you make subsequent learning (like going to class) unproductive.
  • Do your laundry at the right times. Certain times, like Sunday afternoons, everyone does their laundry, so you’ll have to wait a long time. Instead, just do it like Tuesday night or something.
  • If you’re eating alone, try to get something done while you’re eating. Watch an educational video, listen to an audiobook, read your lecture notes etc.
  • Keep track of all your assignments and things you have to do. Have a good calendar and to-do list.
  • Try to diffuse your work by getting started the previous summer, and by getting ahead during vacations.

Health

  • Try to run every day. Running is very good for your health, and refreshes your mind and allows you to think clearly. It also makes you feel good.
  • Carry around a water bottle with a tea bag in it. Easy way to be healthy for the lazy.
  • Get enough sleep (usually). Sometimes it’s worth staying up late, but it’s usually best to get sleep.
  • Take a nap 7 hours after you wake up. See supermemo for why, and for more great information about sleep in general.
  • Consider that you may have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (I do). If you do, consider wearing blue blocking glasses at night.
  • Free food is overrated. In deciding what to eat, balance cost, convenience, health and taste.
  • Use fasta pasta if you don’t have access to a kitchen.
  • Be smart about meal plans. You should usually choose the cheapest one. They’re usually a bad deal when it comes to cost, convenience, health and taste. For example, at my college we pay about $10 to eat at a dining hall, but the food isn’t too good or healthy. I could get better and healthier food for under $10.
  • Try eating 2 meals at the dining hall using just one pass (just finished your first one, study for a few hours, and then eat your second one). Great way to save money and get some work done.
  • Go to the dining halls at the right time. Some times are way more crowded than others. It’s in your interest to schedule your day around this if you can.

Social Life

  • Make good friends. One of the most important aspects of college. Your friendships are one of the best indicators of your happiness, and it also plays a big role in the kind of person who become (ex. being around ambitious people motivates you to be more ambitious).
  • Read Why It’s Hard to Make Friends Over 30. After reading this, you should understand that living in a dorm provides you a lot of social opportunities.
  • Stay up late at night talking about life. For some reason, good conversations tend to happen very late at night.
  • Introduce yourself to everyone on your floor. This is one time where it’s perfectly acceptable to be introducing yourself to complete strangers on a whim.
  • Keep your door open if you live in a dorm. It may seem trivial, but it’s important.
  • You can’t be friends with everyone. Remember… prioritize and cut. You’ll meet lots of people throughout college; naturally and inevitably, you’ll lose touch with most of them.
  • Don’t spend too much time hanging out. Kids in college often spend hours on end moping around with their friends. 1) It gets monotonous. Time away will make it fun again. 2) It’s unproductive. You need other things besides socializing to be happy. Don’t ignore those other things.
  • Eating is a good opportunity to socialize.
  • Explore! There’s lots of opportunities and stuff for you to do in college. Even if it doesn’t seem like you’ll like something, try it anyway: often times people enjoy themselves just because they’re “doing something”, even if they don’t particularly like the thing that they’re doing. An idea: go to restaurants from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

Life

  • Get the big things right.
  • When making big decisions, before you decide on something… 1) write your hypothetical apostasy, 2) sleep on it, 3) run on it (running really helps you think clearly).
  • Be weary of decision by indecision.
  • Beware of cached selves. You could be whoever you want to be, and do whatever you want to do. Unfortunately, cached selves (ideas of “who we are”) often prevent us from doing these things.
  • Beware of ugh fields (<= very dangerous).
  • Beware of ambition.
  • Read http://lesswrong.com/. Rational thinking is important.
  • Disagree properly. Disagreements are opportunities for mutual gain, not for a battle to be “won”.
  • Use the don’t break the chain method.
  • Be independent.
  • Ask yourself: “Why am I here?”.
  • Write.
  • Keep a journal, and write in it once in a while. 1) It helps you to think about your life and keep perspective. 2) Your future self will enjoy having the references.
  • Act according to the veil of ignorance.
  • Be careful about what the top idea in your mind is.
  • Stressing now to be happy later is usually a bad idea.
  • Don’t let yourself have these regrets.

Other

  • “This is the only time in your life where your only real responsibility is to learn.” Cherish that.
  • Don’t put pressure on yourself to “make these the best 4 years of your life”.
  • Consider getting a job that is all down time and lets you do your homework (email all the computer labs and libraries on campus).
  • Consider starting something. A business, a club, a band, a nonprofit etc. It’s a good time to do so because you can fail with few consequences if any. And you’ll learn a lot, meet people, get experience, do something good etc.
  • Lower your expectations. College probably won’t be as good (academically, socially, etc.) as you think it’ll be. It’s hard to enjoy it for what it is when your expectations are sky high.
  • When it seems like everything just sucks, consider college to be a day job. Get through it, so you could do what you really want to do when you come home.
    Different perspective: just accept the unfairness as factors in your optimization problem. You’re trying to maximize your happiness, and unfairness is a variable you have to deal with.
  • People are more mature than they were in high school, but they still probably won’t be as mature as you expect them to be (or as they should be).
  • Consider taking the megabus instead of flying. It’s a lot cheaper, and it isn’t too bad an experience (personally, I like it better).
  • Don’t have too much stuff.
  • You pay tens (or *gulp*, hundreds) of thousands of dollars to go to college!! All the resources and services there are yours. You paid for it. The professors, the facilities, the career services… it’s all yours. You’re entitled to it all. Don’t feel bad about using them.
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Written by Adam Zerner

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