College Knowledge: 101 Tips (2 of 3 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
College Knowledge: 101 Tips by David Schoem. Copyright by the University of Michigan 2005
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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LEARN TO BE A COLLEGE STUDENT: YOU'RE NOT IN HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE

College is an entirely different universe than high school, and your job is to explore that new universe as you move on to the rest of your life. College is not just different but is also a far richer, more substantive, and deeper learning environment than high school. It's important to come to college mentally prepared and with the right expectations for your college experience. Get ready to immerse yourself in an entirely different type and quality of learning.

The worst mistake you can make is to imagine that college is like high school. That's a nightmarish vision. Think about it. Only if you had failed twelfth grade would you still be in high school. Fortunately, you were a very successful high school student, and your reward and opportunity is to go on to the great educational adventure that is college. Don't waste the next four years of your life repeating your high school experience.

At the end of four years of high school, you, along with the other best-educated students in the country, typically know five areas of intellectual thought, including math, science, English, U.S. history, and a second language. To be certain, these are important fields. But a world of ideas awaits you when you enter college.

Most colleges, in their effort to help guide you in the process of broadening your intellectual horizons, require you to take a series of required courses in various disciplinary areas. Unfortunately, too many students embrace these requirements in the old high school mold. They organize their course selection for their first year of college in a manner that will help them "get the requirements out of the way." Please, don't approach your first year of college as yet another year of ugly requirements, forcing you to delay for yet another year the excitement of learning that awaits you.

What steps can you take in your first year to embrace the best that college has to offer? First, take at least one first-year seminar. In a first-year seminar, you will sit in a class of between twelve and twenty students with a faculty member who loves to teach undergraduates, exploring with other bright students a field in which you all have an interest. Most importantly, you will build a small community of interested learners, students and faculty, meeting a few times each week to question, challenge, analyze, and think about ideas that are important to you and the world around you. The small seminar setting is the epitome of the college experience.

Second, take courses with good teachers. Regardless of how interested you are in any given course content or course description, you are better off following good teachers. With good teachers you will be inspired, you will be engaged, you will build a relationship, and you will want to do good work and to learn beyond the limits of the course syllabus.

Third, try out a new idea. It is the very essence of college. College is a place filled with people who think about ideas. This is a chance you must not miss out on, a chance to give voice to all your ideas--the wondrous ones, the ones that will some day save lives, the inventive ones, and also those that are half-baked, barely formed, and on face value seem almost ridiculous. Trying out an idea is so exciting in college because there is a community of faculty and friends who will take you seriously and listen and respond to you.

Fourth, try out a new field of study that you've never considered before. Take a course in some field in which you know very little or even nothing. Yes, there's some risk here. You might find out you're not particularly interested in this field. But if you consider how many years you've been studying the same old topic, over and over and over again without any choice, as if there were only a handful of topics in the world to study, this is a pretty small risk. And the benefits could be enormous. Take some intellectual risks, please!

Fifth, try out a new career. No, most of you don't have to start looking for full-time work just yet. But imagine what life will be like for you if you choose to be an artist, a teacher, a CEO, a writer, a scientist, an engineer, a doctor, a survey researcher, an interpreter, a community organizer, a forest ranger. Many students come to college thinking that their career choices are limited to medicine, law, engineering, and business. Don't think in that limiting way; your career choices are wide open.

Sixth, try out a new friend. High school friendships can be comforting and supportive as you enter an entirely new environment, but if you want to move on with your life and meet the world, then college is precisely the time to assert yourself, make new friends, and pursue your own identity. Students in your college will come from all backgrounds--racial, ethnic, class, religious, sexual orientation, geographic, and national--and you should meet these people.

Seventh, try out a new perspective. You might change your perspective or reaffirm your current viewpoint, but in doing so you will most definitely begin to take responsibility for thinking critically and holding your own views. And, hopefully, you'll begin to see the world beyond factoids and sound bites and understand the complexities of issues. See the world from a point of view of someone who has different interests, comes from a different part of the country, or is of a different gender or race.

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