What does the average student have to do to succeed in college?
The average student has to develop many skills to be successful in college. Here is a partial listing:
Life style issues:
- Get up on time
- Clean your own room
- Learn how to live with a roommate
- Do your own laundry (How do you sort it? How much soap to use? Hot or Cold or Warm?
- Use your meal plan and show up in time to get something to eat
- Using time wisely so you get your studies done and still have fun
- Keeping healthy by eating well, exercising and sleeping
- Remember to sign up for residential housing before a dead line during spring term for the fall
- Pay fines
- Stand in lines for meals
- Stand in lines for books
- Stand in lines for paying fees
- Follow the rules of the hall ( no "hall sports," quiet hours, getting along with a roommate from a different cultural background
- No parents to remind you or to call and get your homework for you.
Academic issues
- Go to class - -
- Not "skipping" class
- Buying text book
- Reading text books
- Paying attention during lecture
- Taking notes during lecture
- Reviewing notes from lecture
- Doing homework
- Doing suggestion problems that are not being graded
- Do work that is not specifically assigned, such as reading material before discussed in class
- Seeking appropriate help resources such as tutoring, study skill workshops, etc.
- Developing support networks with friends, such as study groups, people to share class notes with, proof each other's papers
- Find and use the writing center on campus
- Find and use the campus tutoring service
- Go to offered study skills workshops
- Get information off the "web that professors have posted
- Pay attention to deadlines- - sometimes due dates for MAJOR papers are handed out the first day of class and not mentioned again until the professor is ready to collect them from you.
- Register for classes for the next semester, sometimes before midterms have happened
- Take large group exams - - Understand that your grades may be based on only 2 or 3 grades in the entire semester
- Understand that you are responsible for learning 40 weeks of material in 15 weeks, mostly outside of class on your own.
Social issues
- Meeting new friends
- Join clubs and organizations whether for social fun or social activism
- Attend plays, presentations by guest artists, hear concerts,
- Act like an adult, because that is how you are expected to behave
- Making decisions about alcohol and/or legal/illegal drug use
- Deciding to "party" or to study
- Balancing work and play
Disability issues:
- Finding the Disabilities Services Office
- Registering with the office
- Supplying the requested documentation of your disability
- Discussing appropriate accommodations.
- Learning which accommodations are "free" and which you will have to pay to receive.
- Learning to advocate for your self, including informing professors about your needs for appropriate accommodations, in the manner that the DSS office suggests.
