It's mid July - students will soon be heading for college campuses across the land, unloading their gear and meeting their roommates, some leaving home for the first time.
Most of my readers are well beyond their college years. But many have grandchildren of college age. Advice to teenagers generally goes in one ear and out the other. However, having been a successful student, more or less anyway, with an academic career on a half dozen campuses, I can't resist offering my 2 cents worth, unheeded as it will be.
Some college experiences are much different now than six decades ago when I was a freshman at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Registration now is computerized, surely more efficient than the old standing in line routine. But I have fond memories of it - that sunny September morning registering for freshman English, the line reaching around the block. Standing in line with a bunch of attractive, friendly coeds sure beat standing in a chow line with a bunch of Marines as I was doing a mere 10 days before. How could I be so lucky?
We hear stories of military veterans having trouble adjusting to college life. I cannot identify with that. Vets have every advantage over teen-aged babes in the woods leaving their mothers' apron strings for the first time. Exercise those advantages.
The vets I knew had absolutely no trouble adjusting to college life. Sure, college coursework can be tough; you have to hit it. But compared to life in the Marine Corps, college life was a piece of cake.
Another change in college is the high cost, even adjusted for inflation. High costs make it imperative that students get down to business and not waste their and taxpayer's money. So here's some advice.
First, never cut class - it's the absolute dumbest thing you can do. The rational student - granted, most are probably not - strives to get the highest grade with a given effort or, alternatively, minimize the effort for a given grade. Fair enough. But then, don't cut class, Stupid. It's much harder digging the stuff out of a text than listening to the professor feed it to you. Of course, you need to do both as those actions reinforce each other.
Okay, so the professor is boring. No matter how boring, or seemingly incoherent, if the instructor lectures on something for 50 minutes, you can bet that you will see it again on the exams. It's nice to know what to study.
And you don't like his/her style? Get used to it. Different instructors have different styles, as will your future employers/bosses/supervisors. Not all instructors are award-winners. Your first boss surely will not be. College experience includes learning to adapt.
My next advice regards term papers. The number one rule is to start it early. That doesn't mean completing it right away. It means choosing your subject and jotting down some initial ideas - get something, anything, down on paper early. Those ideas will subconsciously percolate in your mind and ideas will be augmented when talking to other students, standing in line, or waking up in the middle of the night.
Then do the heavy research and crank out the first draft, probably the hardest part. But don't make it harder than it is. Don't worry about how rough it is initially, or if the ideas don't follow logically. Your first draft won't be a prize-winner. Probably neither will your final draft, but you have to move it along.
Next, you have to complete it. Re-arrange it so that ideas follow logically to your conclusion, and clean up the language and punctuation well before due date. Finally, do the final tweaking, which is easy now with computer technology. Even good manuscripts can be improved with minor tweaks. With time on your side, you will probably write a decent paper with this strategy. Let the stressed out slackers wait till the last minute, pull an all-nighter, and turn in a piece of incoherent garbage.
And strategy for taking exams? It starts with the first week of class - show up and listen up. Get on top of the fundamentals on which the more advanced material is based. Do the homework. There is no substitute for that.
Study for exams well before exam date. Instead of overloading on caffeine and pulling an all all-nighter studying for the exam, you will have prepared early. On the night before the exam, briefly review the material, get a good night's sleep, and go to the exam confident and well rested with a clear mind.
And taking the exam? Time is your main constraint. You want to maximize your points in that given amount of time. Don't start with the toughest questions. Start with the easy ones to rack up as many points as rapidly as you can. Once you have those points under your belt, you will have the confidence to go after the tougher questions. Even if you can't answer the toughest question correctly, since you have answered the rest of the questions, you have already probably done well.
Similar strategy applies to knowing what to study. College is an exercise in time management. Here's an example.
As freshmen at the UW College of Agriculture, a typical first semester included freshman English; chemistry; a course in math or the sciences, either botany or zoology; and one ag course, either agronomy or animal husbandry.
The ag courses were typically somewhat easier than chemistry, English, or the math and science courses. Chemistry and English were known as the "flunk out courses." The unsuccessful student would spend so much time on the "flunk out courses" that they would neglect the easier courses - and get lousy grades in those too.
Success in college and best grades go not necessarily to the most intelligent, but to those who exercise common sense and prudent time management.
- John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Fridays in The Monroe Times.
Most of my readers are well beyond their college years. But many have grandchildren of college age. Advice to teenagers generally goes in one ear and out the other. However, having been a successful student, more or less anyway, with an academic career on a half dozen campuses, I can't resist offering my 2 cents worth, unheeded as it will be.
Some college experiences are much different now than six decades ago when I was a freshman at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Registration now is computerized, surely more efficient than the old standing in line routine. But I have fond memories of it - that sunny September morning registering for freshman English, the line reaching around the block. Standing in line with a bunch of attractive, friendly coeds sure beat standing in a chow line with a bunch of Marines as I was doing a mere 10 days before. How could I be so lucky?
We hear stories of military veterans having trouble adjusting to college life. I cannot identify with that. Vets have every advantage over teen-aged babes in the woods leaving their mothers' apron strings for the first time. Exercise those advantages.
The vets I knew had absolutely no trouble adjusting to college life. Sure, college coursework can be tough; you have to hit it. But compared to life in the Marine Corps, college life was a piece of cake.
Another change in college is the high cost, even adjusted for inflation. High costs make it imperative that students get down to business and not waste their and taxpayer's money. So here's some advice.
First, never cut class - it's the absolute dumbest thing you can do. The rational student - granted, most are probably not - strives to get the highest grade with a given effort or, alternatively, minimize the effort for a given grade. Fair enough. But then, don't cut class, Stupid. It's much harder digging the stuff out of a text than listening to the professor feed it to you. Of course, you need to do both as those actions reinforce each other.
Okay, so the professor is boring. No matter how boring, or seemingly incoherent, if the instructor lectures on something for 50 minutes, you can bet that you will see it again on the exams. It's nice to know what to study.
And you don't like his/her style? Get used to it. Different instructors have different styles, as will your future employers/bosses/supervisors. Not all instructors are award-winners. Your first boss surely will not be. College experience includes learning to adapt.
My next advice regards term papers. The number one rule is to start it early. That doesn't mean completing it right away. It means choosing your subject and jotting down some initial ideas - get something, anything, down on paper early. Those ideas will subconsciously percolate in your mind and ideas will be augmented when talking to other students, standing in line, or waking up in the middle of the night.
Then do the heavy research and crank out the first draft, probably the hardest part. But don't make it harder than it is. Don't worry about how rough it is initially, or if the ideas don't follow logically. Your first draft won't be a prize-winner. Probably neither will your final draft, but you have to move it along.
Next, you have to complete it. Re-arrange it so that ideas follow logically to your conclusion, and clean up the language and punctuation well before due date. Finally, do the final tweaking, which is easy now with computer technology. Even good manuscripts can be improved with minor tweaks. With time on your side, you will probably write a decent paper with this strategy. Let the stressed out slackers wait till the last minute, pull an all-nighter, and turn in a piece of incoherent garbage.
And strategy for taking exams? It starts with the first week of class - show up and listen up. Get on top of the fundamentals on which the more advanced material is based. Do the homework. There is no substitute for that.
Study for exams well before exam date. Instead of overloading on caffeine and pulling an all all-nighter studying for the exam, you will have prepared early. On the night before the exam, briefly review the material, get a good night's sleep, and go to the exam confident and well rested with a clear mind.
And taking the exam? Time is your main constraint. You want to maximize your points in that given amount of time. Don't start with the toughest questions. Start with the easy ones to rack up as many points as rapidly as you can. Once you have those points under your belt, you will have the confidence to go after the tougher questions. Even if you can't answer the toughest question correctly, since you have answered the rest of the questions, you have already probably done well.
Similar strategy applies to knowing what to study. College is an exercise in time management. Here's an example.
As freshmen at the UW College of Agriculture, a typical first semester included freshman English; chemistry; a course in math or the sciences, either botany or zoology; and one ag course, either agronomy or animal husbandry.
The ag courses were typically somewhat easier than chemistry, English, or the math and science courses. Chemistry and English were known as the "flunk out courses." The unsuccessful student would spend so much time on the "flunk out courses" that they would neglect the easier courses - and get lousy grades in those too.
Success in college and best grades go not necessarily to the most intelligent, but to those who exercise common sense and prudent time management.
- John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Fridays in The Monroe Times.
