First semester of college is one of the most difficult, but exciting times of your life, trying to get your life in order, and get a routine down. One of the hardest things is getting use to the work load and how college teachers actually teach. The work load itself isn’t too bad as long as you stay on top of your reading and homework. It honestly isn’t very hard. The teaching is a lot different than high school, there aren’t really any group activities and the teachers don’t call you by your name. They stand in front of the room and lecture for a solid hour and then class is over. Taking notes is really important, and so is paying attention. This was weird to adjust to at first but now it is really easy. As long as you take notes and read the book, classes become a lot easier.
Making new friends is one of the best parts of the college experience. You meet so many people the first week of college and are constantly out doing things. The first weekend of college, I was out every night with different people. The most important thing though is to make sure to pick good friends and allot your time the right way. I made some mistakes picking some bad friends and that affected my grades. Be sure to pick friends that like to have fun but also are serious about school. The friends I have now at the end of the semester like to go out and have fun, but they put school first.
To succeed in college, you have to start off strong and be serious. It’s not like high school where if you fall behind it’s easy to catch back up again. Most classes never assign homework, it’s just 3 tests and a final. So doing well on your first tests is really important. Secondly, prioritizing your time is really important. As a freshman, you are going to want to go out all the time because you have so much freedom. Having a good balance of fun and work is really important. And lastly, just picking good friends, because you have no idea how much friends affect you and your attitude towards school.
