1. You’re in charge of this thing. For many students, the most striking
thing about college is that there’s no one there to hold your hand.
Picking courses, getting to class, doing the reading, and figuring out
what’s going to be on the test and what’s expected on the papers—
all of these are things you’re going to have to do pretty much on your
own. Sure, there are profs (and, in some schools, TAs) who’ll give
instructions and offer suggestions from time to time. But you’re the
one who’ll have to take responsibility for hauling your butt out of bed
when it’s ten degrees below zero—or one hundred and five, depending
on what school you’re at—and doing what you need to do.
2. Your parents may not be much help. Some students are on their
iPhone five times a day looking for advice from Mom or Dad. But
even the best-intentioned parents can lead you astray. Colleges are
different—and, in many cases, much improved—from what they
were twenty-five years ago, and professors’ expectations have
changed accordingly. Suggestion: tune down (or, in some cases, tune
out) the parents until you have a firm handle on what’s expected at
your college—today.
3. Attendance isn’t required—but is expected. One of the first things
many students discover is that college classes can be huge: 100,
200, and, at some state schools, even 700 students in a lecture. In
such an anonymous environment, it’s the easiest thing in the world
to tell yourself there’s no good reason to bother going to class. (Even
if your school has small classes, attendance typically counts for
only a tiny percentage of the grade, if at all.) But professors assume
you’ve made all the classes, and they have no hesitation about asking
a midterm or final question that focuses on the contents of a single
lecture. Kinda makes you want to go, doesn’t it?
10 Things You Need to Know About College (but Probably Don’t) 3
4. Content is doled out in large units. You may be used to getting your
content in short, entertaining blasts: the one- to three-minute You-
Tube video, the abbreviation-filled IM, the 140-character tweet. But
the professor is thinking in terms of the fifty-minute lecture, divided
into only two or three main segments; and the author of the journal
article is thinking in terms of twenty-five pages of densely written
argument, divided into perhaps three or four main sections. Bottom
line? You’ve got to adjust your focus from quick bursts of content
to sustained argument. And retrain your attention span to process
long—very long, it’ll seem—units of content.
5. Up to two-thirds of the work is done outside of class. Contrary to
what you might have heard, the lecture portion of the course is the
least time-consuming activity. That’s because (with the exception of
a few very basic, introductory courses) the professor is expecting the
bulk of the work to be done by you, on your own. Doing the reading
and homework; preparing for the quizzes, tests, and presentations;
doing research and writing papers—all of these are activities that can
easily eat up more than half the time you put into any given course.
6. A C is a really bad grade. Many first-year college students—and
even some students who’ve been at college for a while—think that
if they get C’s in all their classes they’re doing just fine—or, at least,
adequately. But what these folks need to know is that in some college
courses the grade distribution is 20 to 30 percent A’s, 30
to 60 percent B’s, and only 15 to 30 percent C’s. Set your sights
accordingly.
7. Not everyone who teaches is a prof. At many state universities—
especially those where the student-faculty ratio is 15 to 1 or greater—
much of the teaching is done by graduate students. At some of the
better state schools (the University of California and the University
of Texas, for instance), only very advanced graduate students are
allowed to teach their own courses. But at other schools (we won’t
mention names because we want to keep our jobs), the lecturer can
be a first-year graduate student, who might not even have majored
in the field in college. Moral? Whenever possible, take courses with
regular faculty, who’ll be more experienced and, in the best cases,
will actually have done research in the subject they’re teaching.
8. It’s the product that counts. Many students think that effort counts.
That’s why, when papers are returned, there’s always a line of students
waiting to argue how many hours they worked, how many
articles they read, and how hard they’ve been trying in the course.
The thing is, in college what counts most is the product: the paper
(not how it was produced), the test (not how much you studied for
it), and the oral presentation (not how much you knew about the
subject, but couldn’t quite get out).
9. Understanding is more than just memorizing. While some intro
courses require some memorizing (vocabulary in foreign languages,
theorems in math, names and dates in history), other beginning
courses will include essays on the exams. And in virtually every
advanced or upper-division course, you’ll be asked not just to regurgitate
what you’ve memorized from the lecture or textbook, but to do
some analysis, apply the concepts to some new cases, or organize
the material or data in some new or interesting way. Pretty different
from what you might be used to.
10 Things You Need to Know About College (but Probably Don’t) 5
10. The prof’s on your side—and wants to help. Many students see the
professor as an enemy to be defeated—the person who’ll trick you
with all sorts of gotcha questions on the test and who’s very stingy
come grade time. But really the professor is eager to teach you and
(believe it or not) would like to see you do well. That’s because, in
many cases, he or she has forgone a much more lucrative career
in business or industry for the sole purpose of educating college
students—like yourself. So when the prof invites you to come to an
office hour, go to a review session, or just communicate by e‑mail,
Skype, or Facebook, consider the possibility that the professor really
means it. Because he or she probably does.
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